Developing a postgraduate curriculum for European psychiatry

Summary Background: The internal market of the European Union allows medical professionals, like psychiatrists, to work in their country of choice. Although the medical qualification is recognized in other countries, considerable differences in education remain. Objective: This article gives an overview of the current state of psychiatric training in Europe, previous efforts to harmonize it and future directions for action. Results: Psychiatric training in Europe is highly diverse. There is no official body within the European Union (EU) that is responsible for training harmonization. Despite previous efforts to generate common European standards for post-graduate training in psychiatry, the implementation continues to be a major challenge. Conclusion: The European Psychiatric Association (EPA), the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS), the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe and the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) have decided to revive previous work on harmonized post-graduate education and created the Task Force on Education in European Psychiatry (TFEEP) in order to reach a training and education consensus in Europe. The creation of an attractive and high quality framework which is based on the needs of modern psychiatric practice and sensitive to European traditions and values is the main aim to be pursued in future.