Children's Hospital (HUS)

The Children’s Hospital is responsible for basic education in paediatrics, paediatric surgery, paediatric neurology, child psychiatry, adolescent psychiatry and paediatric infectious diseases, as well as specialist training and postgraduate research education in paediatrics at the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Medicine. A doctoral programme operates at the Children’s Hospital. The Swedish-language teaching unit in paediatrics has national responsibility for the education of Swedish-speaking paediatricians.

The Children’s Hospital is one of the largest units in the Nordic countries specialised in education and research on children’s and adolescents’ diseases. The Helsinki University Hospital is responsible for specialist care in the hospital district under which it operates. In addition, the hospital has national responsibilities in paediatric cardiac surgery and organ transplantation.

Teaching is provided at the New Children’s Hospital, the Park Hospital, the Jorvi Hospital and, for brief teaching periods, in central hospitals.
Education

The Child Health course is organised in the fifth year of studies, and its scope is 12.5 credits. The studies include study modules in paediatrics, paediatric neurology, paediatric surgery, paediatric infectious diseases and child psychiatry.

Advanced studies are part of basic education in medicine. They can be completed in the form of a research project or a written thesis. Research projects can be supervised by any doctor working at the Children’s Hospital. For many students, embarking on an advanced study project has been the start of work that results in a doctoral thesis. Further information on research projects is available on the website of the Pediatric Research Center.

Contact person for advanced studies
Associate professor Emmi Helle, emmi.helle@hus.fi 
Research

The Children’s Hospital has strong traditions in research. Today, the study of childhood diseases is innovative and cross-disciplinary, based on combining several approaches. The use of data lakes, big data, biobanks and registers is transforming research and enabling the setting of entirely new research questions.

The research community of the Pediatric Research Center includes some 30 research groups representing all fields of paediatrics. Every year, the community produces roughly 10 doctoral theses and 300 refereed scholarly publications. On average, our researchers are granted 70 research permits annually. The goal is to continually raise the level of research and support its high quality.

Most of the research is conducted in doctoral thesis projects in research groups. Students can already apply for a place in doctoral education in research groups during their basic education.

Most of the basic research is conducted in Biomedicum’s facilities, while applied clinical research takes place in hospital settings.

Publications

Pediatric Research Center
Research training

The Children's Hospital's postdoctoral training programme guides and supports young researchers. Training sessions are organised to researchers.

Responsible person

Associate Professor Emmi Helle, emmi.helle@helsinki.fi 

Other members of the steering group

Docent Annika Mutanen
Docent Samppa Ryhänen
MD Heljä Lång

The events of the research training programme are announced on HUS website.
Units
Contact details

Head of De­part­ment

professor Tiina Ojala
tiina.h.ojala@hus.fi   
Children's Hospital
PO BOX 22 (Stenbäckinkatu 11)
00014 University of Helsinki

Deputy Head of De­part­ment

professor Kirsi Jahnukainen
kirsi.jahnukainen@helsinki.fi 

Education co­ordin­ator

Oona Lumatjärvi

Sec­ret­ary

Julija Häyrinen
julija.hayrinen@hus.fi 

Ad­dress

Children's Hospital
PO BOX 22 (Stenbäckinkatu 11)
00014 University of Helsinki