The reference in Norwegian Cardiology
The “Norsk Cardiologisk Selskap” (NCS) was founded in 1969 and has been a member of the European Society of Cardiology since 1972. In a country with approximately 270 actively working cardiologists, we are proud to have more than 300 cardiologists and a total of approximately 700 doctors interested in cardiology as members of our society. In addition, we have associate members from other health professions (researchers, nurses and technicians).
Meetings throughout the year
The society hosts three national meetings each year with scientific programmes of high quality:
- the Winter meeting with a “hot topics” profile
- the Spring meeting, which also is the annual congress held in a different university city each year
- the Autumn meeting, dedicated to echocardiography and arranged by our Working Group of echocardiography
Our main objectives 
We are working towards establishing national quality registries however registries without patient consent are currently not possible in Norway due to legislation in the area. But after several years of work, a legal change may be within reach, possibly as part of a national registry of cardiovascular diseases.
Creating positions for subspecialty training is another major challenge. The lack of training positions is a consequence of cardiology being a subspecialty of internal medicine, and not a main specialty. The need for training positions is especially prominent within arrhythmias and invasive cardiology, but other areas have basically the same need.
We are strong supporters of research. The society arranges a full day basic research symposium in conjunction with our winter meeting with free lodging and travel expenses for the abstract presenters. Further, most of our financial surplus for the last years has been allocated to research grants for young cardiologists learning new clinical techniques or taking their research one step further. Also, we try to channel as many travel grants from the industry as possible through the society in order to support research fellows with presentations at international meetings.
Specialities
The Norwegian Society has five working groups, covering the areas of echocardiography, heart rhythms, heart failure, invasive cardiology, and adults with congenital heart disease. Additional working groups are being considered, but working group status has been reserved for subspecialty areas in cardiology in which more than a handful of cardiologists are involved. The Society board is also supported by a quality council, which, after consulting with national experts, gives a well-founded recommendation to the Board concerning endorsement or not of the ESC guidelines.
Fast communication with our members
Our popular quarterly journal, “Hjerteforum”, is in Norwegian and brings a mixture of information on what’s going on, invited original review articles and summaries of national and international meetings. Each +100 pages issue of the journal is available as download from our website. With a high number of visitors, our website is constantly improving, and is increasingly important for fast communication with our members.
Working together to meet our goals
Since 1 January last year the Norwegian Society has from an integrated part of the Norwegian Medical Association. We enjoy a close collaboration with the National Specialty Committee of Cardiology with the joint project of continuously improving the educational training within cardiology. The Specialty Committee has surveillance of training institutions and educational courses as their main task and does the final evaluation as to whether the individual candidate has fulfilled the qualifications for specialty.
The Norwegian Society has been an integrated part of the ESC for more than 25 years. We also highly appreciate the close collaboration with the other four Nordic societies. From 2006 this collaboration was extended to include our Baltic neighbours, and the first Nordic-Baltic congress will take place in Iceland in 2009.