It is our pleasure to announce that the European Training Requirement (ETR) for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, proposed by the UEMS PRM Section & Board, has been officially approved by the UEMS Council on April 28th and is now available for download from the UEMS website.

The development of European Curricula and the elaboration of Training Standards in each medical specialty represent one of the main goal of the UEMS, as stated below:

-Back in 1994, the UEMS adopted its “Charter on Training of Medical Specialists” with an aim to outline the guiding principles for high level Medical Training. Made up of six chapters, this Charter set the basis for the European approach in the field of Post Graduate Training. With five chapters being common to all specialties, this Charter provided a sixth chapter, known as “Chapter 6”, that each Specialist Section was to complete according to the specific needs of their discipline.  Over the last twenty years, the UEMS Specialist Sections, European Boards, Divisions and MJCs have continued working on developing these European Standards in Medical training that reflects modern medical practice and current scientific findings. In doing so, the UEMS Specialist Sections and European Boards did not aim to supersede the National Authorities’ competence in defining the content of postgraduate training in their own State but rather to complement these and ensure that high quality training is provided across Europe.

For the sake of transparency and coherence, the “Chapter 6” has been renamed as “Training Requirements for the Specialty of X”. This document aims to provide the basic Training Requirements for each specialty and should be regularly updated by UEMS Specialist Sections and European Boards to reflect scientific and medical progress.-

The ETR for PRM specialty has been developed, in agreement with established rules, following an extensive review of the existing experience regarding training requirements for PRM in the European Countries, and an extensive internal consultation in the UEMS PRM Section and Board.

A consultation with other UEMS Section and Boards with potentially overlapping area of expertise and practice has also been performed and, finally, the recommendations expressed by the UEMS ETR Committee have been integrated.

The contents include a short description of the scope of PRM discipline as “the medicine of functioning”; then, the Training requirements for Trainees, Trainers and Training Institutions are described; finally the Curriculum of studies in PRM and the Core competences a PRM physician is expected to achieve at the end of the Postgraduate education period are detailed.

The acknowledgement of a European standard for PRM education represents an important achievement for our discipline, since it allows to establish, clearly and unequivocally, what are the several commitments of the PRM physicians towards people experiencing disability, their carers, the rehabilitation health professionals, the other medical specialties, the policy makers and the society.

We are proud to share this document with the whole community of PRM physicians, in Europe.

Best regards

Nicolas Christodoulou                                   
President of the UEMS PRM Section 

Maria Gabriella Ceravolo
President of the UEMS PRM Board