After passing for gymnasium, Rianne continued with Nursing on the higher professional educational level, being a student nurse in the Radboud university medical center. At the age of 23, she received her Bachelor of Nursing. Her job was offered immediately after her graduation in the department of General Internal Medicine and then at the Thorax / Heart Surgery department. After three years, she started nursing education specializing in intensive care nursing. After four years at the Intensive Care department, she accepted the position of clinical pain nursing consultant at the Department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine. She is still working at this department and has since been employed as a nursing expert and is the hospital leader for the theme “Early Recognition and Treatment of Pain”. In this function, she is responsible for all aspects of pain in patients, such as protocols, work instructions, patient education, training programs, reports and quality improvement programs of individual departments.
In addition to clinical work, Rianne initiated the two-year post-graduate program for pain nursing consultant at the HAN University of Applied Sciences. She still coordinates this training and some other courses related to pain and palliative care at the HAN. Furthermore, she has accepted the assignment to promote research and evidence based practice and give these topics a more prominent place in the courses within HAN VDO.
In 2013 she won a personal scholarship, “NWO Promotion Grant for Teachers”, to start her PhD study on acute postoperative pain management in collaboration with the Radboud University Medical Center and HAN. In 2017 she successfully defended her PhD thesis called:
Improving postoperative pain care: an Acute Pain Service data analysis.
Selection of 5 peer reviewed publications
• van Boekel, R. L. M., Warle, M. C., Nielen, R. G. C., Vissers, K. C. P., van der Sande, R., Bronkhorst, E. M., Steegers, M. A. H. (2017). Relationship Between Postoperative Pain and Overall 30-Day Complications in a Broad Surgical Population: An Observational Study. Ann Surg. doi:10.1097/SLA.0000000000002583
• van Boekel, R. L. M., Vissers, K. C. P., van der Sande, R., Bronkhorst, E., Lerou, J. G. C., & Steegers, M. A. H. (2017). Moving beyond pain scores: Multidimensional pain assessment is essential for adequate pain management after surgery. PLoS One, 12(5), e0177345. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0177345
• Hoogervorst-Schilp, J., van Boekel, R. L., de Blok, C., Steegers, M. A., Spreeuwenberg, P., & Wagner, C. (2016). Postoperative pain assessment in hospitalised patients: National survey and secondary data analysis. Int J Nurs Stud, 63, 124-131. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2016.09.001
• van Boekel, R. L., Vissers, K. C., van de Vossenberg, G., de Baat-Ananta, M., van der Sande, R., Scheffer, G. J., & Steegers, M. A. (2016). Comparison of Epidural or Regional Analgesia and Patient-controlled Analgesia: A Critical Analysis of Patient Data by the Acute Pain Service in a University Hospital. Clin J Pain, 32(8), 681-688. doi:10.1097/AJP.0000000000000315
• van Boekel, R. L., Steegers, M. A., Verbeek-van Noord, I., van der Sande, R., & Vissers, K. C. (2015). Acute pain services and postsurgical pain management in the Netherlands: a survey. Pain Pract, 15(5), 447-454. doi:10.1111/papr.12192
In 2014, Rianne successfully completed the Master Epidemiology at the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research (EMGO +), the Interfaculty Research Institute of the VU Medical Center and the VU University in Amsterdam. She is an active member of the research department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine of Radboud University Medical Center, and participated in various research projects, aiming to bring research closer to the public society, such as the Radboud research team at Lowlands 2016 and the Great National Research on the Sensitivity of Pain in The Netherlands (2017).
Supporting the development of pain nursing consultants, Rianne became the president of the Dutch Association of Pain nurses in 2015, an association that she founded with other colleagues in 2006. In this association, she has taken care of, among other things, the establishment of the area of expertise of Pain Nursing, as well as the Pain Nursing domain in the Nurses’ Quality Register. She is also the president of the multidisciplinary Working Group that prepares the new quality indicator Hospital-wide Pain Management for the Healthcare Inspectorate’s Basic set of Quality Indicators of hospitals.
She also served as a board member of the Dutch Pain Society and has been in Pain Alliance in the Netherlands (P.A.I.N.), established since April 2017.
Rianne is married to Marcel Eikholt. Together they have three children, Lucas, Emma and Sophie, respectively, 14, 12 and 9 years old.
