Similar and different - adjustment of clinical nursing education to educational reforms in the
Scandinavian countries
Sammanfattning
Nursing education in Europe has undergone two reforms, the EU Directives and the Bologna
Declaration, during the last decades aimed to create a unified European platform and integration of
nursing education into the higher education system. The aim of this study was to describe the
adjustment of the nursing education in the Scandinavian countries and especially the clinical parts of
the education to these reforms. A review was done of the EU Directives and the Bologna Declaration
and overall nationally regulating documents for nursing education in each of the Scandinavian
countries with focus on the clinical parts described in for each country. The results show that there
were more similarities than differences in the way the Scandinavian countries have adjusted clinical
nursing education to the reforms. Denmark, Finland and Norway fulfil according to each qualification
ordinance the EU Directives, while the Swedish qualification ordinance contains parts of this
information. All Scandinavian countries meet the requirements in the Bologna Declaration e.g. offer a
Bachelor´s degree and all have a national accreditation system for quality assurance of the
education.