UEMS European Training Requirements

ETRs for high quality training

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At the UEMS, we have the conviction that the quality of care is directly linked to the quality of training provided to the healthcare professionals. We aim at improving Post-graduate Training across Europe our way i.e. in developing training standards, which we call European Training Requirements (ETR).

The ETR set out the knowledge, skills, and competencies that a specialist must acquire during their training in order to practice independently and safely in their chosen specialty.

The ETR cover a wide range of areas of knowledge and competence including specific clinical knowledge, technical skills, communication skills, professionalism, ethics, and more. They are designed to ensure a high standard of training among medical specialists throughout Europe.

Overall, the ETRs play a crucial role in promoting excellence in medical education and practice. And, the UEMS aims with its ETRs to ensure that specialists are adequately prepared to provide high-quality care to patients.

The development & adoption of ETRs

The preparation, writing and adoption of a UEMS European Training Requirements is a thorough rigorous procedure, which ends with a vote at a UEMS Council meeting.

The ETR Review Committee supports the UEMS bodies to organise a comprehensive review and interdisciplinary consultation among multiple specialties, collaboration with scientific societies and professional medical organisations of their projects of ETR.

The UEMS ETR Review Committee is comprised of a team of experienced members, led by Prof. Nada Cikes (Rheumatologist, Croatia):

Dr Andrew Brittlebank, Prof. Monika Brodmann-Maeder, Mr Arthur Felice, Prof. Reinold Gans, Dr Joao Grenho, Dr Othmar Haas, Dr Marc Hermans, Prof. Pedro-Carlos Lara, Dr Ute Moog, Prof. Vassilios Papalois, Prof. Paolo Ricci, Prof. Felix Tanner, Dr Sarah Verheyen.

We have set templates and guidelines for the development of ETR which are available here.

The timeline for ETR in view of discussion & vote at a UEMS Council

Submission of 1st draft

The UEMS body share its draft of ETR for review
4 months before

Reviewing & comments

UEMS Members, bodies, and the ETR Review committee share their comments
2 months before

Updating of the draft

The authors respond to comments & udpate the ETR
2 months before

Final version

Final version to be discussed shared to all Council's attendees
1 month before

Discussion & Approval

The authors present the ETR which are discussed and voted by UEMS Full members
At the Council

Finalisation

ETR updated based on discussions at the Council & published on the UEMS website
1 week after

ETRs, a tool for quality control of specialist training

Thanks to the support of its Specialist Sections, Multidisciplinary Joint Committees and European Boards, the UEMS contributes significantly to the improvement of PGT especially through the development of European curriculum in each medical specialty as well as the elaboration of training standards in its ETRs.

More than 60 UEMS ETRs adopted

in medical specialties or medical disciplines

At the UEMS, we do think and advocate that training programs in European countries should adhere to these requirements to ensure that specialists are adequately prepared to provide high-quality care to patients.

Mobility of European medical specialists and patients creates a strong need for harmonised standards of practice and high quality of patient care. The ETRs can and should play an important role in this process.

From the moment the ETR for a certain specialty is approved, the UEMS offers them across Europe as its view regarding the way forward for quality training in the specialty.
It is entirely up to each country to decide if they wish to see them only as quality control markers or use them partly or in total as their national requirements.