By Annemieke Klijn

The role of Harmen Tiddens in the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine of the State University Limburg was crucial. As of 1970 he became involved in plans for the ‘eighth’. Inspired by educational ideals from the United States and Canada, Tiddens contributed several building blocks for the basic philosophy of 1972. The new faculty, in his view, could only legitimize its existence with the argument that it would train ‘different physicians’. He argued for a problem-based curriculum with a clear emphasis on family medicine, claiming that the faculty should try to hook up with the regional healthcare system ‘in an exploratory and experimental fashion’. Tiddens was appointed chair of the ‘core group’, the first cohort of medical professors, and he became the first rector of the State University Limburg on 9 January 1976, the dies natalis of Maastricht University. Initially, Tiddens’s interest went out to paediatrics, and later he was increasingly committed to the reform of medical education. In addition he got a pilot’s license. He enjoyed flying high up in the clouds in a small plane, to relax. In 1957 he earned his PhD from State University Utrecht (on The renal De Toni syndrome with dwarfism), where in 1963 he was appointed lecturer in paediatrics. In this period he was also deputy-director of the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital in Utrecht, where he focused on the treatment of kidney disorders in children. His interest in educational renewal was awakened during a study trip to the United States and Canada, where he saw new methods of medical education. In 1963 he set up a section of Educational Development in the medical faculty at Utrecht, where physicians and behavioural scientists teamed up to develop new research in educational theory. In particular the gap between specialist medicine and regular healthcare was seen as a problem. Tiddens was inspired by a medical program at Michigan State University (USA), which exclusively relied on healthcare facilities within the region, without having its own facilities. Another source of inspiration to him was the problem-based learning system at McMaster University in Canada, where students did not so much enrol in specific courses on a subject but were exposed to practical problems they had to solve on their own. Tiddens’s idealist plea for similar educational renewal at Utrecht fell on deaf ears, however, largely because of the ‘shackles of tradition’. The Eighth Medical Faculty Preparatory Commission grew interested in Tiddens when in the early 1970s the establishment of a new medical program in Maastricht was hanging by a thread. Was there still a need for more doctors at a time of economic crisis and cutbacks? In the view of Tiddens, the ‘eighth’ could only be justified if Maastricht was going to train ‘a different kind of physician’. He would go to Maastricht on the condition that it embraced educational experiments. Close cooperation between faculty and regional healthcare, in his view, made it unnecessary to build a ‘traditional’ academic hospital – which for no good reason was seen to have ‘almost mystical value’. Tiddens was instrumental in pushing the basic philosophy of a new kind of curriculum, first articulated in Medisch Contact in 1972. The faculty indicated that it wanted to contribute ‘in an exploratory and experimental fashion’ to an optimal arrangement and a new approach of healthcare in the country’s southern region. In addition, the faculty planned to pay special attention to the primary care level. In terms of didactics, the emphasis would be on problem-based learning, self-motivation, attitude-development and progress assessment. In the future, Maastricht might ‘perhaps become a university promoting social welfare’, given the fact that healthcare comprised much more than a medical approach, as he said in 1973 in the September 1 issue of Elsevier. Tiddens became chairman of the core group, the first cohort of prospective professors. He strongly advocated a swift start of the new faculty in 1974 – with consent from The Hague but without a formal legal basis yet. In his view, the advantage of such experiment with a group of some 50 students was that potential practical problems might be tackled quickly. At the official opening of the State University Limburg on 9 January 1976, Tiddens became the university’s first rector magnificus. In late 1978 he unexpectedly announced his leaving, way before the end of his term, to become a professor of healthcare management in Tilburg. He did not extensively explain his reasons for his departure from ‘the eighth’. Tiddens was a man who rather circumvented potential confrontations and did not easily articulate his more pronounced opinions. In his modest view, there were always many different sides to an issue. Later, in the issue of the Observant of 30 January 1981, he said that way back then he resented it that the proponents of a new academic (state-of-the-art) hospital had their way. The original idea of a faculty with a strong region-wide presence proved hardly feasible. It was difficult to find professors, according to Tiddens, interested in playing ‘a fairly humble’ part. After his professorship at Tilburg, Tiddens was director of the National Aviation and Aerospace Medical Center in Soesterberg from 1983 to 1988.