Since March 2011, Prof Dr Yvette M van der Linden (1970) works as senior radiation oncologist at the Leiden University Medical Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, and is founder and head of the academic Centre of Expertise in Palliative Care LUMC. Since June 1st 2020 she holds a chair in Palliative Medicine, which was initiated by IKNL.

More information about Yvette van der Linden

Palliative Medicine

With the chair of Palliative Medicine, the LUMC fulfills the ambition to use the value-based healthcare vision (Value Based Health Care). to further develop palliative care for patient and neighbor-oriented practical research outcomes. This ambition translates into research focused on

• innovations in symptom management and quality of life,
• development of prognostic tools for survival and for fracture prediction (bone metastases),
• patient and family empowerment (through discussion aids, information and education)
• transmural care improvement (eg efforts to prevent unwanted hospital admissions in the last phase)

Through the collaboration with IKNL, this palette is expanded with care registration research and development of outcome parameters. Within the chair, current research into the quality of end-of-life care and the effects of specialized transmural palliative care in generalist care settings will be continued. The collaboration with IKNL strengthens the possibilities for analyzing data from the Dutch Cancer Registry (NKR) that provide insight into outcome parameters and can lead to changes in treatment strategies.

With the establishment of a chair in Palliative Medicine, the LUMC will reinforce its leading role in shaping transmural collaboration, developing training for healthcare providers and research in the field of palliative radiotherapy. With the chair of Palliative Medicine, the LUMC also takes social responsibility for the further improvement of end-of-life care

Academic career

The topic of her PhD thesis in 2005 was on the treatment of cancer patients with bone metastases. Since then, in addition to studying the effectiveness of palliative radiotherapy, she broadened her field of research to palliative care issues concerning pain management, quality of care, quality of life, patient- and family involvement and empowerment, and prediction of prognosis. Several ZonMW projects on palliative care topics are currently ongoing.

She started the national Dutch Platform on Palliation and Radiotherapy of the NVRO (Nederlandse Vereniging Radiotherapie en Oncologie) in Nov 2012 and chaired it until June 2020. As of Nov 2020, she chairs the academic national working group on teaching in palliative care. She is an active member of several national and international working groups on research and teaching on palliative care and on radiotherapy. In 2015, together with Peter Hoskin (UK) she initiated the European ESTRO course on Palliation and Radiotherapy.