On Monday, 12 November 2018, final meetings were held at the Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine (CIEM) between the training programme coordinator and external associates on the project Continuous professional training of emergency medicine workers financed by the European Social Fund. At the meetings, coordinator of the training programme for medical dispatchers M.Sc. Milena Car, MD and coordinator of training programmes for triage workers and emergency department workers Damir Važanić, mag. med. techn., each with their group of external expert associates, discussed and agreed on the closing details regarding the development of training materials for the participants as well as the development of educational materials for instructors to be used during the training exercises within this project.

The project Continuous professional training of emergency medicine workers was the result of the CIEM’s response to the noted great mobility of emergency medicine workers, especially young doctors, the noted possibilities of advancing the knowledge and skills of nurses working in emergency department, and the noted need for defining new educational content and adapting the existing contents with new emergency medicine guidelines. Over the next four years, the project will be implemented equally throughout Croatia, enabling better quality of health care to be provided to all citizens of the Republic of Croatia, including those living in underdeveloped areas and those that are more difficult to access. All exercises are designed to provide enough time to acquire new knowledge and skills through practical work and simulation of actual situations and situations experienced by participants in their workplaces. The project also envisages providing manuals for each participant individually and for all instructors who will conduct training exercises. Testing the acquired knowledge and skills of the participants for all training exercises will be conducted through a written and practical test.

The project envisages the training of 420 hospital EMS nurses and 1,380 pre-hospital EMS workers, as well as 24 future national instructors for the implementation of training exercises.