Leen Vercaemst

Leen Vercaemst graduated as a Registered Nurse & Midwife in Leuven, Belgium. After graduation, she specialized and worked as a hemodialysis nurse until she moved abroad to Saudi Arabia to upgrade her midwifery skills. There, she also received the opportunity to start up a hemodialysis program with training of local staff. After 5 years abroad, having participated in the establishment of a fully functional dialysis unit, she returned to the university hospital in Leuven where she completed a perfusionist training and was contracted as a clinical perfusionist. Dedicated to education and training, she has been the coordinator of the Perfusion School of Leuven since 2000 and has set up a simulation program for Belgian perfusionists. She was involved in the start-up of the ECMO program in the university hospital of Leuven and is since actively involved in multidisciplinary ECLS training. She is coordinating ECLS courses for teams all over Europe and for this purpose she has developed an efficient simulation & skills lab for ECLS training. Since 2017, she is contracted part-time as a clinical perfusionist, part-time as a Nurse Specialist/ECLS coordinator. She is member of the EBCP Steering committee and has been appointed Perfusion Liaison for EBCP and EuroELSO since 2012.