164 APPENDICES Acknowledgments (Dankwoord) Writing a dissertation can be a very strenuous task, but I certainly didn’t have to do it alone. There are many people I would like to thank for their contributions, both direct and indirect, to this achievement. First of all, I am most grateful to the patients and their families for the confidence they have placed in me and my research team. I value the time they committed to my research efforts at a very stressful period in their lives. Their selfless contributions will help others as a result of the knowledge gained from their participation. I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to prof.dr. Henk Verheul for his patient guidance, encouragement and unwavering support. His confidence in my skills and abilities when I was a young physician allowed me to join his medical oncology team in Amsterdam, which he led with vision and integrity. Being both constructive and perceptive, he brought the fascinating landscape of palliative care research to my attention, and that interest has never left me. Always optimistic, sharp-minded and thoughtful, Henk has been a brilliant and inspiring mentor to me. I thought I never again had to wake up completely confused in an abandoned train at a shunting yard when we both became residents of Nijmegen. But then he decided to move to Rotterdam... I am very grateful to prof.dr. Hans Berkhof, whose advice and extensive knowledge were essential in underpinning my research methodology and statistics. His insightful critical feedback, generously spiced with dry-wit humor, challenged me to sharpen my thinking and greatly improved the scientific quality of my research. The work presented in this dissertation has been critically assessed and approved by an outstanding doctorate committee to which I am more than grateful. Prof.dr. Aartjan Beekman, prof.dr. Koen Grootens, dr. Evelien Kuip, prof.dr. An Reyners, dr.ir. Peter van de Ven, prof.dr. Kris Vissers and prof.dr. Lia van Zuylen: I am very honoured and proud that you have accepted to serve on this committee. I am deeply indebted to my research partner, dr. Liesbeth Neefjes, with whom I have worked very closely over the years to complete our PhD projects. Our eagerness did not yield immediate results, and we quickly learned that palliative care research can be a rather slow and agonizing process. Dear Liesbeth, I greatly admire your relentless determination and precision during our exciting but challenging PhD trajectories. I wish you every success in your future career, and I hope our research paths will cross again someday. A special word of thanks goes to Elisa Toffoli, who has been very instrumental in the succesful completion of this dissertation. Her support in collecting and analyzing data for the final chapters of my book has been invaluable. Grazie mille, Elisa. I wish you the best of luck with your own PhD research. I would like to extend my gratitude to all institutions, investigators, research teams and datamanagers for their participation and engagement in our clinical studies. In particular, I would like to thank Marlien Beusink, Saskia Brouwer, Anne Marije Luik, Jantine van ’t Oever, Laura Pijpers and Rita Ruijter for their great support and assistance.
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