Henrik Hanssen

Henrik Love Hanssen (né Lövborg) MBBS, BSc, MD, FRCS, is a senior consultant in general surgery, former Director of Surgery and the current Chief Executive Officer of Holby City Hospital. He assumed the role after Guy Self stepped down in 2015 and was briefly replaced by Ric Griffin at the end of 2016.

During his time at the hospital, he has visited the ED on multiple occasions, most recently after the helicopter crash in August 2016. His other visits include the stolen drugs incident earlier that year and in 2011 when a new position of the ED's Clinical Lead was offered.

Time at Holby City Hospital (2010-16)
He joined the hospital the new joint Director of Surgery in 2011, working alongside Connie Beauchamp. In a meeting with the hospital board, he criticised Connie's plan to purchase a new MRI scanner for the cardiothoracic ward as being self-serving and naive. He later informed the staff that budget cuts and redundancies would have to be made for the good of the hospital, which was in a fraught economic climate.

After Connie's resignation from Holby at the start of 2011, Hanssen became the sole Director of Surgery. In March 2011, after attempting to move all Upper-GI surgical cases from Keller ward to St James' Hospital, undermining Ric in the process and causing Ric to form a mutiny with fellow members of staff, Hanssen offered to operate on Ric in a risky bid to remove his terminal cancer, as an apology.

In 2016 he received a phone call informing him that his family needed him back in Sweden. He resigned later on in the day and left the Hospital in the capable hands of Ric Griffin, who took up the role of acting CEO.

Interferences in the ED (2011-)
In 2011, Hanssen interfered in the ED when a new position of Clinical Lead was offered, and Nick Jordan and Miriam Turner were competing for it. Eventually, he suggested that they both apply for a single Clinical Lead post.

In January 2016, Hanssen was present at Lofty's interview for his band 6 promotion. Although just observing, he made Lofty feel more nervous, but Lofty got the job in the end. On the same day, the hospital was on a black alert, and Hanssen was keeping Connie and the rest of the staff updated on the situation throughout their shift. At the end of the day, he praised Connie's decisions.

In May 2016, Hanssen once again visited the ED on the day new consultant Elle Gardner was due to have her first shift. She was late, and Hanssen made a bet with Connie that she'd be on time, but she ended up being well over an hour late. After Elle's eventful day which involved her getting taken hostage, she went outside for a cigarette where she spoke with Hanssen, an old friend of hers. He told her that he would hope that if she had any issues with the department to let him know. A couple of weeks later, Hanssen went to check up on how Elle was finding work in the ED.

In June, Hanssen visited the ED to inform Connie that the press were about to publish an article on the hospital as a patient had gone to them claiming her pills had been stolen the previous week. Connie put it down to the fact the woman must have misplaced them and brushed off his concerns, claiming she had more important things to do. Hanssen later spoke to Elle and explained that the trust had got involved too and were looking for someone to blame and Elle soon figured out he meant Connie, implying her job could be in danger if she failed to address the issue. Elle later discovered the pills in Charlie's locker after suspecting him, and when her and Rita went to Connie, she was apprehensive to report it to Hanssen. Elle tried to convince her to for the good of the department and people in it but she refused and asked her to leave, unaware that Elle was trying to help her following the hints given to her by Hanssen earlier should Connie decide not to act on it. Elle later caught Hanssen walking out of the ED under the assumption tha he knew and inadvertently revealed that it was Charlie to his surprise. This ultimatley left Rita with no other choice but to put Charlie on special leave, whilst Connie blamed Elle and turned the department against her.

In August, Elle contacted Hanssen to inform him of Connie's car crash. He later visited the ED and went over to Charlie's party to inform him that Connie had been in a car accident and was being treated in the ED. Already shocked at the day's events, Hanssen was horrified when the helicopter that Grace was in crashed outside the ED, causing damage to the entrance and ambulance bay. He informed Charlie that he would be closing the department and diverting all cases. As Charlie was helping the injured over at the pub, Hanssen instructed him to deal with the press but Charlie angrily told him that his skills were needed elsewhere. Later in the day after Connie and Grace had been initially admitted and treated, Hanssen showed Elle Grace's head scan results showing that she had sustained a subdural haematoma and her life was in danger.

Behind the scenes
Guy Henry plays Henrik Hanssen in Holby City as a regular character, and in Casualty as a crossover character. Although his appearances in Casualty are rare, he generally appears in episodes which see a major event occur in the hospital, such as when the hospital was put on a black alert in the 2016 series 30 episode "Black Alert". He returned for further appearances in May and June that year. It was confirmed in June that Henry would reprise his role as the character during the 30th anniversary episode at the start of series 31.

The episode "Holby Sin City" is non-canon, and therefore isn't included in the above biography. This is Hanssen's first appearance since series 25. In the episode, Hanssen comes to check up on the ED during a night shift. During the episode, Hanssen clashes with Dylan and Robyn over whether they should resuscitate a patient. However, when Hanssen calls for a vote, he's outnumbered when they say that he should be intubated. After the shift, Hanssen applauds Robyn's hard work.

Appearances
Hanssen first appeared in the series 25 episode "Duty of Care". After this, he made no further appearances until the end of series 29, at which point he began making more frequent guest appearances.