“I get my inspiration from improving healthcare through applied research in cooperation with the target group, education and healthcare institutions and partners. What drives me is a vision aimed at ‘health for all’ through better quality and access to healthcare, with special attention for people with limited health literacy.”
PhD research
Ellen Bakker conducts PhD research in the field of occupational health. In the SPRiNG cohort study, she measures and monitors the most important determinants of drop-out due to mental workload, among nursing students and newly graduated nurses. Along with a systematic review and expert meetings, this will lead to the development of three interventions aimed at improving the mental resilience of nursing students and newly graduated nurses. One intervention will be tested in a randomised controlled trial.
Background
Ellen Bakker has been a registered nurse since 1990 and worked for ten years in home-based care. She studied Cultural Anthropology and Non-Western Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and graduated in the field of Medical Anthropology. Her master’s thesis was an explorative qualitative research study of disclosure, illness beliefs, coping and help-seeking behaviour of participants in a home-based care AIDS project in Malawi, East Africa. She worked for Vilans, the Dutch Centre of Expertise for Long-term Care, and Markant, the Amsterdam Centre of Expertise for Informal Care, on innovation projects to improve healthcare for families with multiple problems and initiated and implemented WMO projects to improve the support for providers of informal care in Amsterdam.
Projects
In late 2008, Ellen Bakker started working as a lecturer in the Advanced Nursing Practice master’s programme. In 2010 she started working at Research Centre Innovations in Care, for the evaluation of SeCZ TaLK, a gaming tool for professionals that helps youngsters and adults between 12 and 25 years old with a chronical disease to talk about sexuality, intimacy and relationships. Within the NURSE-CC project, she participated in a qualitative study on nurses’ views on patient self-management and in a qualitative review of self-management support from the perspective of patients with a chronic condition.
