Abstract

The guidelines for the development of medicine and nursing indicate that in the future there will be less and less institutionalised treatment. The treatment of patients will be increasingly carried out at in their home environment. Therefore, knowledge development is essential for nurses. Following the pattern of the developed countries, special knowledge and evidence-based nursing will become increasingly important. Nowadays, the level of knowledge of nurses entering the clinical environment is becoming very important. The Republic of Slovenia has already implemented some ways that enable nurses to gain additional knowledge before their employment at hospitals and one of these is the national professional classification (NPK) or professional specialisation. The NPK is formally recognised professional competence for work in a specialised professional medical area. A professional specialisation is a special form of postgradu-ate education and training for additional nursing skills and knowledge enhancement. Nurses can obtain special nursing knowledge in different ways and for different medical areas, but for paediatric nursing there is still no officially recognised programme that would make this possible.

Key words: nursing, nurse, special knowledge, specialisation