Registration
Lounge
Registration of your presence at the congress is done at the information desk on the first floor.
Speakers
Annchien Alkemade
Friso Muntinghe
Daniel Strijbos
DICIM brings together insurance physicians and medical advisors to share knowledge, build professional connections, and remain at the forefront of a field that is continuously evolving.
By engaging with one another and exchanging insights, we enhance the quality of the assessments we make and the advice we provide.
We Are Our Bodies
Our bodies are more important than ever; collectively, we have never exercised so much, and we pay close attention to our diet. At the same time, it seems that our bodies are becoming less and less necessary: due to robotisation and AI, we are becoming redundant in the labour process. What is our body, then, other than a programmable machine? In his presentation, philosopher Aldo Houterman takes you on a journey, using examples from science, art and sport, to explore the various meanings of the human body. He also discusses how certain body images still influence the way humans are portrayed.
Long-Term Health Conditions Don’t Clock Off – Making Workplace Self-Management Work
Long-term health conditions are self-managed at work, not simply around it. Drawing on mixed-method PhD research, the session explores how self-management, job demands, work relationships and timely support combine to shape sustainable work ability. Delegates will be introduced to a practical model aimed at removing self-management barriers, to help people remain well, work able and productive at work.
A review of evidence on what predicts the risk of work disability and how to support sustainable work participation
This presentation reviews evidence on risk factors for sickness absence, disability pension, and delayed return to work at different levels – from individual to work-related. It also summarises the effectiveness of workplace interventions and considers how modifiable risks can be identified and sustainable work participation supported in healthcare
Work participation is often treated as an outcome of successful treatment. This keynote challenges that assumption.
Drawing on trials of work-focused CBT and MCT, Individual Placement and Support, and chronic pain interventions, I will explore how integrating work directly into treatment can improve both clinical outcomes and sustainable work participation.
Brain–Gut Treatments in Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: The Case for Routine Clinical Adoption
Convergent evidence supports a biopsychosocial model in which cognitive, affective and behavioural factors influence stress related neuroimmune changes and central sensitisation, interacting to perpetuate symptoms across irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and quiescent Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
In this keynote I will use my work on IBS to trace the pathway from theory and identified psychosocial mechanisms through intervention development, feasibility testing, and clinical and cost effectiveness studies, to the implementation work required to embed evidence based behavioural interventions into routine medical care. I will argue that this requires collaboration with people with IBS and multiple stakeholders, including industry partners and policymakers. I will also contend that the dichotomy between “functional” and “medical” symptoms is unhelpful and may impede progress toward truly integrative care. I will present evidence that brain–gut models and related cognitive behavioural treatments are relevant to people with IBD as well as IBS and show how a similar pathway for symptom management in IBD could be a cost effective approach to managing the condition. Finally, I will demonstrate that treating depression and psychological distress in IBD can positively affect inflammatory markers and reduce healthcare costs.
Borderline personality disorder - new insights and remaining challenges
I will provide an overview over the current state of the art on borderline personality disorder including diagnostic procedures, etiology and treatment but also talk about ongoing challenges and typical interpersonal dynamics when interacting and working with individuals with BPD.
From Evidence to Practice: How to Make Work Part of Treatment
How can clinicians translate work-focused treatment into everyday practice? In this interactive session, we will use clinical cases to explore how to address work from the first consultation, identify barriers to participation, challenge avoidance, and integrate psychological treatment with practical return-to-work strategies.
Somatic Symptoms: Perception, Coping, and Functional Assessment
Most patients request help from the medical system because of somatic symptoms. However, the classification as a functionally relevant symptom depends on the perception and attribution of the symptoms by the patient. The interaction of somatic symptoms and psychological process will be highlighted, and recommendations will be given how to handle this situation and how to offer explanations.
Spotting the Risk before the Employee Drops Out
Using employee perspectives from PhD self-management support research, we will explore and identify early signs that someone with a long-term condition may be at risk of leaving work, and develop practical interventions before absence, disengagement or job loss sets in.
Respecting Beliefs, Expanding Options: Helping Patients Consider Psychological Approaches to Persistent Symptoms
When patients present with persistent physical symptoms despite negative medical tests, they are often told there is no obvious disease process or that their symptoms are medically unexplained. Rather than feeling reassured, many patients become more anxious, worry that something has been missed, feel medically gaslit, and/or believe the clinician has dismissed their experience as "all in their head".
This workshop focuses on the importance of a positive diagnosis—explaining to patients what they do have rather than only what they do not. Effective communication begins by exploring the patient’s experience and beliefs about their symptoms before offering an explanation. I will demonstrate how a brief, empathic assessment of symptom meaning, threat appraisal, and coping behaviours creates the foundation for a credible, collaborative biopsychosocial explanation.
Using our work on irritable bowel syndrome as a case example, I will show how to present a biopsychosocial formulation that validates the patient’s experience, links cognitive affective and behavioural drivers to symptom perpetuation, and introduces brain–gut treatments as plausible, evidence based options.
From Evidence to Practice: How to Make Work Part of Treatment
How can clinicians translate work-focused treatment into everyday practice? In this interactive session, we will use clinical cases to explore how to address work from the first consultation, identify barriers to participation, challenge avoidance, and integrate psychological treatment with practical return-to-work strategies.
Somatic Symptoms: Perception, Coping, and Functional Assessment
Most patients request help from the medical system because of somatic symptoms. However, the classification as a functionally relevant symptom depends on the perception and attribution of the symptoms by the patient. The interaction of somatic symptoms and psychological process will be highlighted, and recommendations will be given how to handle this situation and how to offer explanations.
Spotting the Risk before the Employee Drops Out
Using employee perspectives from PhD self-management support research, we will explore and identify early signs that someone with a long-term condition may be at risk of leaving work, and develop practical interventions before absence, disengagement or job loss sets in.
Respecting Beliefs, Expanding Options: Helping Patients Consider Psychological Approaches to Persistent Symptoms
When patients present with persistent physical symptoms despite negative medical tests, they are often told there is no obvious disease process or that their symptoms are medically unexplained. Rather than feeling reassured, many patients become more anxious, worry that something has been missed, feel medically gaslit, and/or believe the clinician has dismissed their experience as "all in their head".
This workshop focuses on the importance of a positive diagnosis—explaining to patients what they do have rather than only what they do not. Effective communication begins by exploring the patient’s experience and beliefs about their symptoms before offering an explanation. I will demonstrate how a brief, empathic assessment of symptom meaning, threat appraisal, and coping behaviours creates the foundation for a credible, collaborative biopsychosocial explanation.
Using our work on irritable bowel syndrome as a case example, I will show how to present a biopsychosocial formulation that validates the patient’s experience, links cognitive affective and behavioural drivers to symptom perpetuation, and introduces brain–gut treatments as plausible, evidence based options.
The power of expectations: About placebo and nocebo effects and their clinical relevance
Patient expectations have been shown to be one of the best predictors of treatment success. Research on placebo and nocebo effects indicates that these effects determine treatment outcomes, both in positive (placebo) and negative (nocebo) directions. Clinical examples are highlighted, and recommendations how to deal with these effects in treatments, rehabilitation, expert opinions, and clinical reserach are presented.
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What does a doctor need to know to determine the extent of a person’s inability to work? And how do you translate that into a percentage? Since the introduction of the Accidents Act in 1901, doctors have been involved—sometimes against their will—in the implementation of social legislation. Medicine and social policy thus became intertwined—something that may seem self-evident today, but certainly was not back then.
In this lecture, I examine how that early medical assessment practice took shape: the tension and interplay between medical knowledge and legal requirements. I will examine uncertainty, doubt, and controversial diagnoses, as well as the relationship between doctors and the people they examined. The efforts to make work disability measurable and assessable not only changed the meaning of work disability but also transformed medicine itself.
Personality disorders: challenging dynamics in the patient, at work and in the consultation room.
People with a personality disorder are more likely to experience emotional and behavioural problems and often find themselves in conflict with others more readily. They experience a great deal of stress, which leads to the more rapid development of not only psychological but also physical symptoms, and creates an increased risk of chronic illnesses, fatigue and chronic pain. Unhealthy behaviour is also more common.
This has implications not only for their personal lives and their ability to work, but also for the extent to which they can benefit from treatment and the process of reintegration. After all, these patients are more likely to have problems with adherence to medication and following lifestyle guidelines. It is also more difficult for them to adequately assess their limits, their care needs and when to seek help. Furthermore, interpersonal problems arise more readily, which not infrequently lead to a breach of trust, complaints procedures and misjudgements, as well as over- or under-treatment.
This lecture will explore the challenges you may encounter with various personality disorders and how you can better understand these through the internal dynamics of the disorder itself. Building on this, it will examine in more detail the pitfalls in assessment and treatment, as well as the factors that influence reintegration and treatability.
If my memory serves me right: what doctors need to know about memory and forgetting
Douwe Draaisma discusses how memories are formed, change, and become distorted, and how forgetting works. With a particular focus on cryptomnesia, the revision of memories, and different types of memory, he explores the reliability of memories.
In work environments, there are various forms of exposure to biological, chemical and physical agents, which can lead to adverse health effects in the short or long term. With the availability of affordable, small, lightweight and therefore body-worn sensors – known as wearables – it is possible to monitor these exposures as well as physiological parameters. These wearables are used in prevention as early warning systems or to adjust work protocols. It is also possible to determine an exposure-effect relationship by correlating exposure history with time series of self-reported health effects or objectively measured physiological parameters. The next step is to use data science models to incorporate such measurements into personalised prediction models, so that personalised alerts and behavioural advice can be provided automatically when characteristic patterns emerge in measurements of exposure or physiological parameters, thereby preventing acutely unhealthy working conditions or long-term illness.
This presentation covers wearables, exposure history, predictive models, legislation, risk communication and prevention.
In the privacy of the consultation room, patients do not always speak their minds. There is a wide array of jargon to describe this: dissimulation, exaggeration, malingering, Münchhausen syndrome, underperformance, etc. The resulting confusion over terminology complicates diagnosis and regularly stands in the way of treatment. In this talk, Harald Merckelbach brings order to the terminological chaos surrounding symptom validity. He also demonstrates how validity tests can help to draw a clearer distinction between psychopathology, deception and everything in between.
The rise of AI offers opportunities for insurance medicine, where capacity shortages and high administrative pressure lead to backlogs in work capacity assessments. AI can improve efficiency and automate administrative tasks, but decisions must meet strict medical and legal standards.
This study, involving multiple stakeholders, identifies the prerequisites necessary for the use of AI in insurance medicine. Through interviews and a focus group with professionals, four prerequisites were identified: openness to innovation, sufficient AI knowledge, a well-equipped organization, and maintaining human control at all times. AI shows great promise, but should only be deployed once these prerequisites have been met.
This study examines the extent to which NLP systems can reduce administrative burdens for medical professionals in occupational and insurance medicine. Through semistructured interviews with users and experts, experiences, effectiveness, and integration into work processes were analyzed. NLP appears to be promising, provided that systems deliver accurate and reliable output and align well with professionals’ preferences and work practices. Key conditions for successful implementation include training, clear guidelines, gradual rollout, continuous feedback, and organizational support.
Perimenopause can affect work performance, but it remains unclear how this is addressed within the Dutch social security system. This mixed-methods study examined the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of 474 UWV professionals, supplemented by eighteen semistructured interviews and four group interviews. There were clear differences among professional groups in the extent to which professionals were familiar with perimenopause. This familiarity often depended on personal interest and experience. Although most professionals recognize the impact of perimenopause on work, they experience uncertainty regarding their role, appropriate support, and referral practices. Organization-wide training and practical guidelines can support professionals, provided they allow sufficient room for professional flexibility and alignment with clients’ individual needs.
More than one in three working women going through menopause experience limitations in their ability to function at work due to menopausal symptoms. As part of the MenoPause consortium, the RIVM, in collaboration with Amsterdam UMC, is investigating which women are at increased risk of reduced work performance, what factors play a role in this, and what their experiences and needs are.
In this presentation, Dr. Bette Loef shares recent findings on the openness to discussing menopausal symptoms at work and the recovery needs of working women going through menopause. She will also discuss the role of lifestyle and the implications of these findings for work and health.
We present the results of a training program for claims adjusters, which was designed to improve the handling of claims related to whiplash-associated disorders (WAD I-II). The handling of WAD claims is an integral part of the rehabilitation process following a whiplash injury.We tested our newly developed “Best Practice Whiplash” (BPW) recommendations in practice at a major insurance company. Our targeted training has improved claims adjusters’ knowledge and self-reliance in the areas of WAD risk screening and evidence-based claims management. This is a first within the Dutch private insurance sector and provides evidence of effectiveness, supported by training content based on medical guidelines, legislation, and psychology. This innovative approach to promoting WAD rehabilitation is also important for insurance physicians and medical advisors.
This exploratory, qualitative study examined which factors insurance physicians consider when assessing WIA applications from clients with substance use disorders. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted using a fictional case study. The results provide insight into the factors that influence the assessment of both work capacity and prognosis. Notably, there was a wide variation in the assessed work capacity, with the same factors sometimes being weighted in opposite ways. In addition, physicians experience various dilemmas during the assessment, and there is a need for supporting literature.Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Donny Kreuger discusses the key findings from his scientific studies and delves deeper into inter-physician variation in the assessment and description of work capacity. In doing so, he highlights the most important insights and points of discussion from his dissertation, including the shift from a biomedical to a biopsychosocial approach to work capacity and its implications for the design of return-to-work programs.
Finally, he addresses the further implementation of the BAR in practice and its significance for the UWV and insurance physicians.
The rise of AI offers opportunities for insurance medicine, where capacity shortages and high administrative pressure lead to backlogs in work capacity assessments. AI can improve efficiency and automate administrative tasks, but decisions must meet strict medical and legal standards.
This study, involving multiple stakeholders, identifies the prerequisites necessary for the use of AI in insurance medicine. Through interviews and a focus group with professionals, four prerequisites were identified: openness to innovation, sufficient AI knowledge, a well-equipped organization, and maintaining human control at all times. AI shows great promise, but should only be deployed once these prerequisites have been met.
This study examines the extent to which NLP systems can reduce administrative burdens for medical professionals in occupational and insurance medicine. Through semistructured interviews with users and experts, experiences, effectiveness, and integration into work processes were analyzed. NLP appears to be promising, provided that systems deliver accurate and reliable output and align well with professionals’ preferences and work practices. Key conditions for successful implementation include training, clear guidelines, gradual rollout, continuous feedback, and organizational support.
Perimenopause can affect work performance, but it remains unclear how this is addressed within the Dutch social security system. This mixed-methods study examined the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of 474 UWV professionals, supplemented by eighteen semistructured interviews and four group interviews. There were clear differences among professional groups in the extent to which professionals were familiar with perimenopause. This familiarity often depended on personal interest and experience. Although most professionals recognize the impact of perimenopause on work, they experience uncertainty regarding their role, appropriate support, and referral practices. Organization-wide training and practical guidelines can support professionals, provided they allow sufficient room for professional flexibility and alignment with clients’ individual needs.
More than one in three working women going through menopause experience limitations in their ability to function at work due to menopausal symptoms. As part of the MenoPause consortium, the RIVM, in collaboration with Amsterdam UMC, is investigating which women are at increased risk of reduced work performance, what factors play a role in this, and what their experiences and needs are.
In this presentation, Dr. Bette Loef shares recent findings on the openness to discussing menopausal symptoms at work and the recovery needs of working women going through menopause. She will also discuss the role of lifestyle and the implications of these findings for work and health.
We present the results of a training program for claims adjusters, which was designed to improve the handling of claims related to whiplash-associated disorders (WAD I-II). The handling of WAD claims is an integral part of the rehabilitation process following a whiplash injury.
We tested our newly developed “Best Practice Whiplash” (BPW) recommendations in practice at a major insurance company. Our targeted training has improved claims adjusters’ knowledge and self-reliance in the areas of WAD risk screening and evidence-based claims management. This is a first within the Dutch private insurance sector and provides evidence of effectiveness, supported by training content based on medical guidelines, legislation, and psychology. This innovative approach to promoting WAD rehabilitation is also important for insurance physicians and medical advisors.
This exploratory, qualitative study examined which factors insurance physicians consider when assessing WIA applications from clients with substance use disorders. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted using a fictional case study. The results provide insight into the factors that influence the assessment of both work capacity and prognosis. Notably, there was a wide variation in the assessed work capacity, with the same factors sometimes being weighted in opposite ways. In addition, physicians experience various dilemmas during the assessment, and there is a need for supporting literature.
Donny Kreuger discusses the key findings from his scientific studies and delves deeper into inter-physician variation in the assessment and description of work capacity. In doing so, he highlights the most important insights and points of discussion from his dissertation, including the shift from a biomedical to a biopsychosocial approach to work capacity and its implications for the design of return-to-work programs.
Finally, he addresses the further implementation of the BAR in practice and its significance for the UWV and insurance physicians.
What if someone has a good job and a great salary, but has been unhappy at work for a long time? In this humorous and thought-provoking talk, Anne-Marije Buckens invites you to reflect on job satisfaction, sustainable employability and the courage to make a new choice. Why do people stay where they are? And what does it take to finally open the door of the golden cage? Expect relatable stories, sharp insights and a fresh perspective on people who feel stuck in their work.
