Mrs. Tessa Busch-Westbroek, M.D. – Long Bio

Tessa Busch-Westbroek is a rehabilitation physician with more than 25 years of clinical experience. Her main focus concerns the multidisciplinary care for people with diabetes-related foot ulcers and Charcot’s foot, and orthopaedic footwear provision for people with variety of disorders, with a strong emphasis on foot ulcer prevention.

Tessa obtained her doctors degree in 1992 at the Medical University of Leiden, the Netherlands. Her training to become a rehabilitation specialist, was done at 3 different cities and hospitals in Arnhem, Zwolle and the Rehabilitation Centre, ’t Roessingh in Enschede.
After her graduation, Tessa worked from 1996-2000 as a general rehabilitation specialist in the Zuiderziekenhuis in Rotterdam, where she started two new outpatient clinics, with great enthusiasm.

In 2001, she started working at the Department of Rehabilitation of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, where education and scientific research are key parts of her job. At the AMC, she started to learn more about management of diabetic foot disease from her colleague R.P.J. Michels, internist-endocrinologist of the Dpt.of Endocrinology and Metabolism. They started a weekly multidisciplinary outpatient clinic, where, besides the rehabilitation physician and the internist, the vascular surgeon, the podiatrist and the orthopaedic shoe technician participated, while other specialists were available on call. She is still the driving force of this team, together member with Prof. M. Nieuwdorp, MD, Internist-Endocrinologist.

In 2003 she started to work together with the team of Prof. Sicco Bus, human movement scientist and now full professor of the Department of Rehabilitation, in several studies on offloading diabetic foot ulcers and studies on new technologies for the prevention of foot ulcers. Ever since, she has been the clinical lead of the numerous RCTs and other scientific studies at this centre. Next to that, her research focus is on the aetiology and treatment of Charcot’s neuro-osteoarthropathy, where she coordinates an ongoing RCT.