Training guidelines in anaesthesia of the European Board of Anaesthesiology Reanimation and Intensive Care.

The following Guidelines for specialist training in Anaesthesiology are intended to help in the process of harmonizing specialist education in Europe. Thus, they re ̄ect common minimum criteria for training, and these Guidelines should be reviewed regularly. It is recognized that individual EU member countries are responsible for specialist training. However, within the EU mutual recognition of fully trained specialists is obligatory, and for this reason a longterm educational harmonization process is presently taking place. The year 2001 Guidelines describe the basic knowledge, skills and attitudes a modern practising specialist in Anaesthesiology must possess. They do not deal with advanced training in subspecialties following recognition of specialist competence ± special guidelines are in preparation for some of these. The Guidelines deal with objectives of training, aims of the teaching programme, basic science content of the training programme, core syllabus in anaesthesia, core syllabus in intensive care medicine, core syllabus in pain management and therapy, core syllabus in resuscitation and emergency medicine, quality control of training through a hospital visitation programme, a common minimum duration of training, and the use of logbooks. In addition, the Board recommends the use of simulators in training where available.