Regina (Rianne) L.M. van Boekel RN, PhD is a trained nurse, teacher, epidemiologist and researcher who acquired her PhD in the year 2017 at the Radboud University, the Netherlands. 

She is currently assistant professor at the Department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine of the Radboud university medical center in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on acute postoperative pain management, prediction and assessment of pain. She is an active member of the research department and participated in various research projects, aiming to bring research closer to the public society, such as the Radboud research team at Lowlands 2016 and the Great National Research on the Sensitivity of Pain in The Netherlands (2017). 

She won several personal scholarships and awards and is member of several (inter)national scientific (advisory) committees. Rianne also works as senior researcher in the Lectorate Emergency and Critical Health Care of the Knowledge Centre of Sustainable Healthcare, School of Health Studies at HAN University of Applied Sciences. She initiated the two-year post-graduate program for pain nurse consultant at the HAN in the year 2011 and is still actively involved in this training.  

Supporting the development of pain nurse consultants, Rianne was the president of the Dutch Association of Pain nurses from 2015-2021, an association that she founded in 2006. In this association, she supervised the establishment of the area of expertise of Pain Nursing, as well as the Pain Nursing domain in the Nurses’ Quality Register. She also actively collaborated with European colleagues to develop the Core curriculum for the European diploma in Pain Nursing, published in 2019. She is also the president of the multidisciplinary Working Group that prepares the quality indicator Hospital-wide Pain Management commissioned by the Healthcare Inspectorate. She also served as a board member of the Dutch Pain Society and Pain Alliance in the Netherlands (P.A.I.N.).