The European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) has approved new training requirements for clinicians working in paediatric emergency medicine (PEM).  This is intended to address some of the existing problems related to PEM training and the availability of specialist Paediatric Emergency Physicians (P-EPs) in Europe. Once training has been completed, P-EPs will be expected to have EM competencies in addition to those equivalent to the core paediatric curriculum, enabling them to give high-quality and appropriate care to children in the emergency setting.

The updated 2nd edition of the PEM ETR was approved during the UEMS Council meeting in Tunis in April. The syllabus, a revised version of the 1st European Training Requirements for Paediatric Emergency Medicine (2018), was created by the Curriculum Development Special Interest Group of the Paediatric Branch society (EUSEP) of the European Society of Emergency Medicine (EUSEM), with stakeholders from the European Academy of Paediatrics (EAP) and The Union Européenne des Medicins Specialistes - Emergency Medicine (UEMS-EM) section.

Input from the PEM working group, which included representatives from EUSEM, UEMS-EM, and EAP, was instrumental in getting the need for a new ETR accepted and to its presentation to the UEMS Council, said Dr Ruud G. Nijman, from the Department of Paediatric Emergency Medicine, St Mary’s Hospital. London, UK, who took the lead in discussions. “We hope that the new PEM ETR will help to improve the situation revealed in a paper published in 2024 in The European Journal of Emergency Medicine that drew attention to significant gaps in the time spent on PEM training across Europe,” he said. “The new ETR should help produce more expert PEM clinicians capable of teaching trainees in the specialism, thus enabling them to look after acutely injured and unwell children in EM settings.”

The expected outcomes of the ETR include that specialist Paediatric Emergency Physicians (P-EPs)

will be able to look after patients with a wide range of pathologies, from the life threatening to the self-limiting, within all paediatric age groups in the ED setting, and that all decisions should be made in the best interests of the child or young person in their care. Principles of safeguarding children and young people should be integrated with every patient contact, and all P-EPs should be able to identify and provide appropriate support to vulnerable patients who may not be able take care of themselves.

“As well as helping to provide improved patient care, this ETR is an important document for the growing PEM community in Europe, and will be a source of inspiration and political leverage at a national level in trying to grow the speciality,” said Dr Nijman.