New talents will strengthen Danish emergency medicine

In recent years there has been considerable political focus on how emergency patients are admitted to hospital - and not least, on who admits them. A new talent programme supported by the Trygfonden will ensure that more medical students end up choosing to specialise in emergency medicine.

The talent programme takes place in close collaboration with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, USA. In future, two Danish medical students will annually have the opportunity of a ten-month research stay at the prestigious hospital, which was recently named the best in the USA.

Professor Hans Kirkegaard hopes that the programme will contribute towards developing talented doctors in the area of emergency medicine and that it will also motivate more medical students and junior doctors to conduct research into emergency medicine:

"At the Mayo Clinic the Danish students will both conduct research with and be trained in emergency medicine by the emergency medicine department’s medical doctors. We hope and believe that such an intensive research stay with some of the world's leading specialists in the area will increase the level of interest in emergency medicine," says Professor Hans Kirkegaard from the Research Center for Emergency Medicine at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital.

Together with medical specialist in emergency medicine Bo E. Madsen, who has spent many years working in the Emergency Department of the Mayo Clinic, he is one of the driving forces behind the new talent development programme.

TrygFonden has just granted DKK 1,349,000 for the purpose.

Young research area

As opposed to the USA and many other countries, emergency medicine is not defined as an independent area of medical specialisation in Denmark.

"Emergency medicine is a very young research area in Denmark. It will undoubtedly be very beneficial for the emergency medicine research environment in Denmark that medical students will now have the opportunity to experience emergency medicine in the USA and, hopefully, follow a research path when they return home to Denmark," explains Hans Kirkegaard.

The first two Danish students have just been selected on the basis of a round of applications and interviews in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic. Their stay at the Mayo Clinic begins after the summer holidays. 

Though one medical student has already been sent on a research stay to check out the possibilities for establishing the talent development programme. The stay has really opened his eyes:

"The approach to emergency medicine is different at the Mayo Clinic. In the first place, there is considerable focus on the value of good research into emergency medicine, which is a prestigious speciality area in the USA. Also, the teaching has focus on the patient in a different way than here in Denmark. The knowledge I have brought home with me after my stay is incredibly applicable and absolutely relevant in a Danish context," says medical student Larshan Perinpam.

He has subsequently been made coordinator for the talent programme. He also expects that the programme will in the long term strengthen the Danish research environment:

"A research year at the Mayo Clinic is an effective way to kick-start your research because you not only become involved in one, but rather several different research projects. It is intensive, extremely instructive and in my own case, it has undoubtedly given me the motivation to pursue a research career in emergency medicine and within emergency medicine on the whole, says Larshan Perinpam.

Facts

• TrygFonden supports the Emergency Medicine Talent Development programme with DKK 1,349,000.
• The 10 month long research stay consists of eighty per cent research and twenty per cent teaching.
• This is followed by two months spent at the Research Center for Emergency Medicine in Aarhus.
• Medical students must have completed their ninth semester to apply for admission.
• The research stay takes place at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.

Further information

Professor Hans Kirkegaard
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine, Research Center for Emergency Medicine and
Aarhus University Hospital
Tel.: +45 7846 1074 / +45 2814 9783
hanskirkegaard@dadlnet.dk

Medical student/research student Larshan Perinpam
Aarhus University, Research Center for Emergency Medicine and
Aarhus University Hospital
Tel.: +45 4240 7440
larshan@clin.au.dk