MJC and European Board

UEMS, the ‘Union Européene des Médecins Spécialistes’, represents hospital medical specialists within the European Union; other European countries are involved as associate members or observers. The main purpose of UEMS is the harmonisation and improvement of medical practice in Europe and it has created specialist Sections for each major discipline which is recognised in more than one third of the EU countries. Emergency Medicine thus just fails to qualify, but it has been accepted in UEMS as a Multidisciplinary Joint Committee, MJC, which includes representatives from other established Sections with an interest in Emergency Medicine.

The MJC first met in Brussels in 2005 and two meetings are held each year. Important agenda items have included the Policy Statement on Emergency Medicine in Europe, the European Curriculum for Emergency Medicine and, most recently, the development of a European Diploma or Fellowship examination. The Committee now includes the Secretary-General of UEMS and ten members nominated by EuSEM as well as representatives from the Sections of Anaesthesiology, Cardiology, Geriatric Medicine, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Paediatric Medicine, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and General Surgery, from the MJC on Intensive Care Medicine and from the European Junior Doctors.

The Rules of Procedure of UEMS allow each specialist Section to establish its own European Board as a working group with the specific aim to guarantee the highest standards of care in the relevant specialist field, a guarantee to be achieved through recommendations for setting and maintaining standards of training and through recommendations for the content and quality and evaluation of training programmes. The MJC on Emergency Medicine already has this purpose and in October 2010 the Council of UEMS approved the formal establishment of a European Board of Emergency Medicine. It is currently intended that the MJC and the new European Board will meet together on two occasions each year.