The European Heart Association is investing significant resources to evaluate long-term paths to practice improvement and professional competences. It aims to enhance the content and delivery methodology of a Common European Nursing Curriculum. It will provide a unified framework for training nurses across the EU.

The initiative of developing a Common European Nursing Curriculum is being undertaken with the purpose of tackling challenges in the training, certification, and mobility of nursing staff across the European Union. The European Union has been facing a noticeable shortage of such staff while forecasts point to an ever-increasing trend. If nursing students are trained and certified based on common ground standards for qualification, this would be conducive to increased mobility within the EU and thus an approach to filling the gap in the nursing market that some countries are especially suffering from. Addressing the shortage of well-trained nursing staff should be one of the main priorities for policy makers and creating a Common European Nursing Curriculum is one such step towards reaching that goal. The goal is to be achieved via the benefits of increased mobility, motivation, trust, quality of skills, and student exchange.

The initiative consists of not only building a Common European Nursing Curriculum, but also creating an online platform to facilitate the delivery of the Curriculum. This platform provides the educational means to cover the curriculum and can be quickly and easily implemented.