Ank qualified as a midwife in East Anglia, U.K. in 1994. From 1995 to 1998 she worked as a midwife in Nigeria. She did a Master in Public Health in Edinburgh from 1998-2000, while she worked as a midwife in Edinburgh and Livingstone. Since 2000, she has been working as a primary care midwife in the Netherlands. She also worked at the Dutch Organisation of Midwives (KNOV) and at TNO Institute for Applied Research. She finished her PhD on birthing positions in 2008. Since 1 May 2009 she works as a senior researcher at VU University Medical Center.
Expertise
Dr. Ank de Jonge conducted research in several areas of midwifery research with an emphasis on primary care midwifery. She gained experience in several research methods such as meta- analysis, secondary analysis, retrospective and prospective cohort studies and qualitative interview and focus group studies. As the coordinator of the new Midwifery Science Unit, she formulated organisation of care and clinical effectiveness of midwifery care interventions as priority research areas for the next five years.
She was the first author of the world’s largest study into the safety of home births; this paper had a huge impact nationally and internationally. In 2010 she received a VENI career grant for her research proposal ‘Building a model for quality of care during labour for low-risk women; the importance of care provider and care setting’. The proposed study fits in perfectly well with this VENI project.