Dr A.E. de Rijk
Expertises
- Return-to-work / re-integration into work
- Sickness absence and work disability
- Work-Life interference
- Gender and health
- Cardiac rehabilitation
- Breast cancer and return-to-work
- Work stress
- Policy evaluation
- Stakeholder (employee, client, professional) perspectives
- Multi-method research
- Teaching on the topics mentioned above
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Career history
I graduated in Work and Organisational Psychology at Nijmegen University in 1994. I received my PhD in Health Psychology at Utrecht University in 1999. My thesis was named: “Fatigue in general –practice patients. An empirical study of fatigue in general practice and the development of the Quality-Quantity model for understanding fatigue”, which was published in five papers in international peer-reviewed journals. I have been working at Maastricht University since 1999 and have focussed my research and education on psychological and sociological theories regarding work disability and re-integration into work.
I led research projects on gender differences in return to work after sickness absence, the expertise of vocational experts, and the experiences of people on long-term disability pension. Between 2008 and 2011 I chaired and co-ordinated the revision of the Dutch guideline on cardiac rehabilitation, which now also includes directions for re-integration into work. Since 2005 I am connected as guest researcher to the section of Insurance Medicine of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, I am co-supervisor of PhD-projects on the management of sickness certification in Sweden, the evaluation of a Canadian work disability prevention, the experiences of Flemish women who return to work after breast cancer, occupational therapy interventions for female employees with breast cancer, the determinants and consequences of irregular working times in nurses, cost-effectiveness studies of return-to-work interventions. I supervise(d) diverse PhDs and post-docs in projects on e.g. sustainable employability (ZonMW), work experiences of chronically ill patients (Stichting Op Eigen Kracht aan het Werk), employer perspectives on cancer among employees and intervention for employers (KWF cancer foundation, KOTK), (cost) effectiveness of Return-to-Work interventions, the experience of irregular working times, Work-Life-Balance in parents in Malta and the Netherlands, theoretical frameworks for sickness absence among school children.