Third Edition 2019
“…To facilitate the free movement of nurse specialists within the European community and to ensure an excellent and safe perioperative care, a European core curriculum is necessary to set standards which are recognisable across European countries.
EORNA has therefore developed a core curriculum as a guiding framework to be used to facilitate the improvement of existing national perioperative nursing programs or to initiate an adequate education program based on identified essential topics and core competences when one does not exist.
EORNA produced and published the first edition of the “European Common Core Curriculum for Operating Department Nursing” in 1997 and updated it in 2012.

It is now a great pleasure to launch the third edition, revised and updated. We hope that you find this document helpful and that it will be a positive guide for all perioperative nurses across Europe.”

May Karam, EORNA President 2019


EORNA framework for competencies can be found here