Joris Slaets

Joris Slaets is Professor Emeritus of Geriatric Medicine and from January 2015 to December 2019, he was director of Leyden Academy. Joris is now retired.

In his academic career, Joris was always committed to making changes in healthcare for the frail elderly. Joris wanted to shift the focus from disease and symptoms to the personal desires of the individual and create opportunities to enjoy life and surround our elders with love and care. Radical medical interventions should be kept to a minimum in the final phase of life; Joris introduced the concept of ‘harmful elderly care’. His belief that enjoying life and compassionate care should be intrinsic to the current policies will not be swayed and constitutes an important pillar for the transition of long-term care for the future. With his studies and field work at Leyden Academy, Joris aimed to integrate enjoying life and compassionate care into current practice where strict systems, protocols and normative frameworks are dominant.

Joris was appointed Professor at the Groningen University Medical Center in 1999. Joris is co-founder of the field of geriatrics within internal medicine and is one of the founders of the current training of Internal Medicine and designed the ‘reflection’ competency.

Joris was one of the project leaders of the National Elderly Programme, Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee Human-based Research and active in various commissions such as the Health Board and the Healthcare Institute, the Netherlands.