Hello! My name is Dr. Esther de Groot and I work at the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, where most of my work is in lifelong (informal) learning of professionals from different disciplines. I am enthusiastic about, committed to, and knowledgeable in medical education (research). My expertise is in specific research methods (realist reviews, video-stimulated recall interviews, and social network methods) and theories (boundary crossing theories, activity theory, social capital theory) which could be valuable for IPR.Global. My role is in supervising, initiating, and performing research. Finally, I keep a clear eye on opportunities for co-writing proposals to obtain research grants.
While working in veterinary medicine, I became interested in OneHealth, which asks for education in interprofessional collaboration. Then I started working at the Medical School, doing research, and one of the PhD students for whom I became a supervisor was someone who, as a general practitioner, had been interested her whole life in intraprofessional collaboration (between professionals in primary and secondary care). Her enthusiasm for the topic was contagious. Also, the work of Sanne Akkerman on boundary-crossing inspires me as it emphasises the learning opportunities that differences between people and between contexts provide; interprofessional – and intraprofessional collaboration hence became one of my core research topics.
As a researcher, I am particularly proud on this publication:
Meijer, L. J., de Groot, E., Honing-de Lange, G., Kearney, G., Schellevis, F. G., & Damoiseaux, R. A. M. J. (2021). Transcending boundaries for collaborative patient care. Medical Teacher, 43(1), 27-31. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2020.1796947
I just joined the network of IPR.Global because I expect that it will provide an opportunity to join forces in the field of research into learning for interprofessional and intraprofessional collaboration. International comparisons between the ways that facilitating learning of such collaboration has been organized will be valuable to develop the learning health system which is, as we have seen in the pandemic, more and more global. As a result of the partnership within IPR.Global, we might be able to acquire grants for collaborative research projects. Finally, I could represent IPR-Global toward the large group of medical education researchers in the Netherlands.
