I am Philip van Haren, a Physician Assistant in Pediatric Medicine at the Amalia Children's Hospital, part of Radboudumc in Nijmegen.
I started my career in 1998 as a pediatric nurse at St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein. In 2003, I relocated to Wijchen to work as a Pediatric ICU nurse at the PICU in Radboudumc in Nijmegen. It was there that my interest in procedural comfort was sparked.
In 2017, I transitioned to the day treatment and short-stay unit at the Amalia Children's Hospital and began training as a Physician Assistant (PA). I was trained in the day treatment unit by my colleague PA Brieke Hampsink, who is one of the founders of our pediatric sedation program. In 2020, pediatric anesthesiologist Mila Leeuwerik and I took over the responsibilities of that program. We expanded the team and in 2023, participated in the PROSA basic course with two teams of Medical-Pedagogical Care Providers, nurses, PAs, and doctors. Three of my sedation colleagues and I are now members of the PROSA faculty. Our goal is to make procedural comfort available to all of our patients through internal training and by regularly sending teams to the PROSA basic course. Our sedation program has significantly expanded in terms of days, procedures, and team members, and we strive for daily optimization of procedural comfort for children.