Laura Mortelmans successfully defended her PhD!

On June 23, 2025, Laura Mortelmans successfully defended her PhD entitled:

“Medication self-management during hospitalisation in patients with polypharmacy – Identifying medication self-management challenges, developing supportive strategies and preparing for effectiveness evaluation.”

Her research offers valuable insights into the challenges patients face in managing their medication, particularly after hospital discharge, with their perceptions of medication use and the influencing factors.

Based on these insights, supportive tools and strategies were developed and tested to support patients in managing their medication more effectively. These tools were integrated into the existing SelfMED intervention, which facilitates medication self-management by patients during hospitalisation.

Finally, the groundwork was laid for evaluating the SelfMED intervention’s impact on post-discharge medication adherence, by testing a combination of adherence measures and the development of a study protocol.

You can find the full PhD thesis here.