The 'Greying' of Europe - Reflections on the state of nursing and nurse education in Europe

TY - JOUR

T1 - The 'Greying' of Europe - Reflections on the state of nursing and nurse education in Europe

AU - Wells, J. S.

AU - Norman, I. J.

N1 - Funding Information: The example of Ireland highlights a key problem in addressing the nursing shortage through education within the European context. Despite the Bologna Declaration (1999), there is no uniform approach to the education of nurses within Europe. Ireland is the only country that has fully embraced pre-registration education at degree level. The UK has two levels of educational preparation for entry onto the UK register – diploma and degree. France and Germany remain firmly wedded to a hospital based non-degree training, whilst smaller countries such as Hungary have adopted a more vocational college based approach ( Jackson et al., 2009 ). There are initiatives to agree common standards for nurse education, consequent upon the Bologna Declaration (1999), such as the Tuning Project (2000) which aims to develop similar although not necessarily the same model of education across 16 participating European countries ( Zabalegui et al., 2006 ). However, achieving a consensus is proving to be a slow process and in the current economic downturn prospects for wide spread adoption and so greater conformity are questionable. Last year the European Federation of Nurses’ Association called upon the European Commission to facilitate ‘cooperation, collaboration and financial support to implement change’ ( EFN, 2008 ). The clear implication of such a call is that this is effectively lacking between member states at present.

PY - 2009/11

Y1 - 2009/11

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=70349748254&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.nedt.2009.07.003

DO - 10.1016/j.nedt.2009.07.003

M3 - Editorial

C2 - 19733423

AN - SCOPUS:70349748254

SN - 0260-6917

VL - 29

SP - 811

EP - 815

JO - Nurse Education Today

JF - Nurse Education Today

IS - 8

ER -