History
Rigshospitalet is Denmark’s largest hospital and is a major centre for patient treatment, research, development, and training. Rigshospitalet has national and regional responsibilities within nearly all medical specialities. The hospital has about 1,100 beds and there are more than 60,000 inpatients and 400,000 outpatient visits annually. About 7,400 individuals are employed at the hospital.
Rigshospitalet is part of The Capital Region of Denmark, Region Hovestaden, one of five administrative units in Denmark. The Region provides healthcare, mental care, regional development, research, and additional services for over 1.6 milion people – approximatly 30% of the population of Denmark.
The Perfusion Department it is part of the Thorax Anesthesiologic Clinic. The clinic performs 1,800 open-heart surgeries anually in five operating rooms at Rigshospitalet and three others at Gentofte Hospital.
Our group is comprised of twelve perfusionists, including five perfusionists who are specialized in peadiatric perfusion. We also have three perfusion student who is currently in clinical rotations at Rigshospitalet and Gentofte.
The first Paediatric Perfusion Course was held in 1995 at Rigshospitalet and was organised by Anne-Marie Kjersem, a current member of the Rigshospitalet Perfusion Department. The course was started as an effort to share knowledge an experience in the specialty of pediatric perfusion with our colleuges in Scandanavia and Europe as well as to provide additional education for students persuing a career in pediatric perfusion. Since the start of this program in 1995, the course has been held every second year until 2003 and again in 2006. The latest courses have been scheduled in connection with the curriculum of the first perfusion school in Denmark, the Scandinavian School for Cardiovascular Technology. In 2006 course title was renamed “European Paediatric Perfusion Course” in an effort to increase the number of active participants in our program and include our pediatric perfusion colleugues from all of Europe.
In 2008 the European Paediatric Perfusion Course has received recognition as a international meeting, allowing the opportunity for all perfusionist participants of the course to receive 8 recertification points.