Ethnic Ressource Team (ERT)

Ethnic Resource Team in hospitals (ERT) (2003-) (www.ressourceteam.dk) has been and still is our main project. It is a teaching, visiting, care and counselling team at hospitals in the region. It now consists of more than 40 volunteers covering 16 languages, different religions and many nationalities. These have been trained first of all in crisis psychology and in counselling and are ready to be called upon by hospital staff, patients and relatives when needed. The team also provides teaching and supervision of hospital staff. The project manager functions, in addition to organizing the volunteer team and its work, also as imam in the hospitals. The two imams who have had this function in the hospital until now have been and still are board members and volunteers in IKS.

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During the first years of ERT’s existence, IKS paid the coordinator's salary and other expenses, but after two years ERT gradually became a permanent part of the health service in the Copenhagen area. Among other things, this led to the fact that in 2006 a prayer and quiet room was arranged for Muslims located opposite the hospital's church at Rigshospitalet (the national hospital). However, IKS is still involved in the work, especially with regard to the teaching of the coordinator and the volunteers as well as recruitment of ad hoc resource persons outside this circle.