Marieke J. Schuurmans PhD, RN

Marieke J. Schuurmans, Ph.D., RN is a nurse and researcher, appointed professor and chair in Nursing Science at the UMC Utrecht and professor of Care for older people at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She worked for over ten years as a clinical nurse specialist in geriatric medicine and is an expert on complex nursing care of older people. In her Ph.D. study, she developed the Delirium Observation Screening (DOS) Scale which is nowadays part of regular nursing care in Dutch hospitals and which is translated into numerous languages. Her current research focuses on the prevention of care related complications in hospitalized older multimorbid patients and the daily functioning of older people with multimorbidity in primary care.

Marieke Schuurmans is responsible for the Nursing Science Master Programme of the University Utrecht and supervises twenty Ph.D. students. In 2013 she is appointed as independent governmental Chief Nurse Officer, the Minister of Health’ supreme independent advisor on nursing. She is a member of the Dutch Health Council, chair of the research committee of the National Association of Nurses, a fellow of the European Association of Nursing Scientists and member of the Honour Society of Nursing Sigma Teta Tau International.