Brigitte van der Heijden, Hand surgeon

Dr van der Heijden first studied psychology at the University of Groningen and Amsterdam and became a Work and Organization Psychologist in 1989. Hereafter, she studied medicine and did her thesis “preservation strategies for isolated skeletal muscles of the rat” at the University of Utrecht. She specialized in Plastic, Reconstructive and Hand Surgery at the University Hospital of Utrecht. Since 2005, she is working in the Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis in s’-Hertogenbosch and further specialized in hand surgery. In 2010, she passed the European Board of Hand Surgery Exam of the Federation of European Societies for Surgery of the Hand (FESSH) and became an examiner herself since 2015. Since 2019, she also works in the Radboudumc to further expand the expertise in hand surgery, both clinically and scientifically.

In addition to clinical work, she also performs many administrative duties. She has served as a board member of the Dutch Society of the Hand (NVvH) for almost ten years of which the last two years as president. Since 2017, she is a board member of the FESSH and the chair of the congress committee. In 2021, she will be one of the presidents of the FESSH congress, which is one of the biggest and prestigious congress in the field of hand surgery and which will be organized in Rotterdam in 2021.

 

After focusing on clinical and administrative work for many years, Dr. vd Heijden likes to contribute more at the scientific level now, especially in the field of wrist surgery. Her ultimate goal is to get a better (inter)national coordination of clinic and scientific research to improve patient care.