Trudy van der Weijden received her medical degree in 1989 and certified as epidemiologist. In 2010 she was appointed as full professor at the department of Family Medicine, embedded in the Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), of Maastricht University. The title of her research chair being Implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines. Since 2005, she has been leading the CAPHRI research program ‘Implementation of evidence’.
Her research has a specific focus on patient perspectives and patient participation in medical decision making where the tension is felt between standardising work (the application of guidelines) and patient-centred work (the preferences of the patient in the context of the consultation). She is a member of GIN, and a member of the steering committee of the International Patient Decision Aids Standards Collaboration (IPDAS). In 2011 she chaired the International Conference on Shared Decision Making in Maastricht. She has (co-)authored more than 270 international scientific papers in peer reviewed international journals, and successfully supervised 40 doctoral graduate students.