About

About this blog

This is the personal blog of a Dutch psychiatrist working in a University hospital. He is involved in medical education. He is the director of medical education at the Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is part of the institute of Medical Education Research Rotterdam (iMERR). The Institute conducts research in medical education in the broadest sense, incorporating all aspects of medical education, ranging from selection of students up to the post initial education of medical specialists and stimulating the education and training of its investigators (PhD students and postdocs). The Institute is a collaboration between the Erasmus MC and the Institute of Psychology of the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

His specialty in psychiatry is the treatment of depression. This explains his interest in electroconvulsive therapy and the development of new forms of neurostimulation for the treatment of depression. He does research in the treatment and neuroscience of depression.

He mostly writes about these topics on this blog for fun and to keep up with recent developments.

Besides writing about his work he also writes about other subjects that (neuro)stimulates him such as chocolate, computer gaming, gadgets, and Internet. Warning: he has a positive publication bias when it comes to these subjects.

The postings are based on what I want to write about and what I feel will be interesting to read.

About the author
The author of this blog is Walter van den Broek. He is working as a psychiatrist since 1992. His dissertation in 2004 was on “Treatment of depressed inpatients, efficacy and tolerability of a four step treatment algorithm”.
He is an associate professor in psychiatry, director of medical education and director of psychiatric residency training. He teaches nurses, medical students and residents in psychiatry. He has experience in medical and psychiatric education, training and supervision.

He is a member of educational committees and he participated in the development of different educational programs for medical students and psychiatric residents. He supervises medical students doing their medical traineeships. He educates residents and psychiatrists in the theoretical and practical aspects of Electroconvulsive therapy in The Netherlands.

He doesn’t give advice to students with diabetes here nor in the comments. Neither my hospital, partners, university, nor anyone else has approved of anything I write. The information in my posts is not intended as recommendations on how to diagnose or treat illnesses.

My blog posts contain a lot of medical information. As much as possible I will try to write blog posts with sources that can easily be looked up and verified. I write this blog on my own for fun and educational purposes. I seldom respond to questions for links, guest blog posts or commercial purposes.

Disclaimer
This blog provides information, content and/or data (collectively, “Information”) contained therein for informational purposes only. The author does not provide any medical advice in this blog, and the Information should not be so construed or used. Using, accessing and/or browsing the blog and/or providing personal or medical information to the author does not create a physician-patient relationship between you and the author. Nothing contained in this blog is intended to replace the services of a licensed, trained physician or health professional or to be a substitute for medical advice of a physician or trained health professional licensed in your state. You should not rely on anything contained in this blog, and you should consult a physician licensed in your state in all matters relating to your health.

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does not accept any form of advertising, sponsorship, or paid insertions. We write for our own purposes. However, we may be influenced by our background, occupation, religion, political affiliation or experience.

The owner(s) of this blog will never receive compensation in any way from this blog.

The owner(s) of this blog is not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog owners. If we claim or appear to be experts on a certain topic or product or service area, we will only endorse products or services that we believe, based on our expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.