Art Vreugdenhil is an MD working at the Maxima Oncological Centre in Veldhoven. In his work he stresses the importance of the personal preferences in cancer treatments. What he proposes in his talk is an increased involvement of the patient in the choices that are made during treatment. Medical experts should not only talk to each other but should open up their multidisciplinary consultations to input from the patients so their care can be tailored to the specific lives of the patients. A medical oncologist and hematologist. Working at MMC, a regional teaching hospital, he spent most of his time on adverse events of systemic cancer treatment. With a strong focus on how to improve the quality of life during and after cancer. Can we inform patients to go for a certain approach as oncologists? Do we provide our patients with pure medical technical information after a multidisciplinary counselling (MDC)? Or do we integrate the patient’s preferences into such a MDC? And if we do so, does the patient really receive the best care? How do we define optimal medical treatment and integration of the patient’s preferences? Why do we not ask our patients to participate in an MDC?
Art will address all these questions by using both a scientific and personal experience to demonstrate how shared decision making can be carried out in cancer care. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at
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