Background

Medical education within the European community is regulated by EU Council Vocational Directives. Primary medical degree qualifications and postgraduate specialist qualifications obtained anywhere within Europe must be formally recognised in all other European countries (EU Parliament and Council Directives 81/1057/EEC, 1981; 2005-36-EC, 2007).

The Bologna Declaration

The issue of ‘Freedom of movement’ for graduates applies not just to medicine, but across all of European Higher Education and postgraduate vocational training. This led to the Bologna Declaration (European Ministers of Education, 1999) and the ongoing ‘Bologna Process’ which seeks to create a system of easily readable and comparable degrees and the establishment of a European Higher Education Area. Action lines of the Bologna Process include:

  1. A three-cycle system of higher education degrees - Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate - normally equating to two or three years of study each. The “Dublin Descriptors” are generic outlines of the level of academic achievement for each cycle (Joint Quality Initiative informal group, 2004).
  2. A qualifications framework describing the typical learning outcomes/competences for each cycle and discipline.
  3. A European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).
  4. The Diploma Supplement (a common format for documenting degrees).
  5. The development of European quality assurance standards for Higher Education.

Implementation of the Bologna principles across Europe has been variable. Some countries declare their Higher Education provision "Bologna compliant". In others, the Bologna Process has not yet had a significant impact

The Tuning Project

Making vocational degree qualifications comparable and easily readable is at the heart of the Bologna Process. Methods of achieving this based purely on duration of study are fallible and give little information as to how graduates will perform in the workplace. A more robust outcome-based approach was developed by the Tuning Project (http://tuning.unideusto.org/tuningeu), a sector-wide project to agree learning outcomes/competences for all disciplines in Higher Education in Europe. Initiated in 2000, the Tuning Project is led by Julia González (University of Deusto) and Robert Wagenaar (University of Groningen). Several disciplines, including nursing, developed learning outcomes during the initial phases of the Tuning Project (Tuning Educational Structures in Europe. Final Report, Phase 2, 2005).