In brief
- Under the new plan, training as a nurse responsible for general care runs to 4,648 hours over three years: 2,240 hours of theory and laboratory work and 2,408 hours of clinical placement. The minimum that European law requires for the diploma to be recognised automatically in the other Member States is 4,600 hours.
- The plan is phased in: year I from 2026-2027, year II from 2027-2028, year III from 2028-2029. Pupils who are now in year II or year III finish on the 2018 plan.
- The number of hours in each year is identical to the 2018 one. What changed are the modules: medical informatics becomes a digitalisation and e-health module with a clinical placement, and 1,125 hours move from the theory column into the laboratory one.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 760 of 8 September 2026
In force from: 8 September 2026, the date of publication
Pupils who have started year I at a post-secondary health school are studying under a school plan published a day after their classes began. Order of the Minister of Education and Research no. 5.582/2026, signed on 31 August 2026 and published on 8 September 2026, approves the curriculum plan and the 39 school curricula for the qualification of nurse responsible for general care, the largest qualification in post-secondary health education. Classes in the 2026-2027 school year had started on 7 September. That same 8 September also brought the order that divides up the school year in vocational education and at technological high school, and that one expressly leaves post-secondary schools on their own curriculum plans, with no correlation. The plan discussed here is precisely one of them.
The text of the order has four articles and fits on one page. The annex runs to 377 pages and is published separately, in Official Gazette of Romania no. 760 bis, on pages 68-444. That is where the curriculum plan for the three years sits, together with the curricula of the 39 modules, from Human Anatomy and Physiology through to Nursing Research.
The structure of the hours looks like this. The school year has 42 weeks, split into two semesters of 21 each. In year I, 14 weeks per semester are theory and 7 are clinical placement; in year II, 11 and 10; in year III, 10 and 11. Over three years that comes to 70 weeks of school and 56 of clinical placement. The total number of hours is 1,456 in year I, 1,600 in year II and 1,592 in year III.
The three figures in the annex come to 4,648 hours. Of these, 2,240 are class and laboratory hours, while 2,408 are hours of clinical instruction, that is work at the patient’s side, in hospital or in the community. Nowhere in the annex does this total appear; it can be obtained only by adding up the three tables.
The figure matters because the profession is regulated at European Union level. Article 31(3) of Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications requires the training of a nurse responsible for general care to comprise „a total of at least three years of study” and „at least 4,600 hours of theoretical and clinical training, the duration of the theoretical training representing at least one third and the duration of the clinical training at least one half of the minimum duration of the training”. Anyone who finishes a school that meets these thresholds has the diploma recognised automatically in the other Member States, with no equivalence examination.
The thresholds are met, but narrowly. The 4,648 hours exceed the minimum of 4,600 by 48 hours, that is by one per cent. Theoretical training, at 2,240 hours, comfortably clears the one third of 1,534 hours. Clinical training, at 2,408 hours, exceeds the one half of 2,300 by 108 hours, which is less than three weeks of placement.
What it changes in practice
The plan applies to every post-secondary health school in Romania, public and private, that enrols pupils for this qualification. Article 2 sets the sequence: year I moves onto the new plan from the 2026-2027 school year, year II from 2027-2028, year III from 2028-2029. The first cohort trained entirely under this plan graduates in the summer of 2029. Pupils now in year II or year III finish their schooling on the plan approved in 2018.
The annex also dictates where the clinical placement takes place. Clinical training is carried out „in healthcare units accredited by the Ministry of Health, as well as in the community, including home nursing services, on the territory of Romania, in Romanian”, under the responsibility of nurse teachers. In every service the pupils attend there has to be at least one nurse responsible for general care supervising them. The standards for accrediting placement sites are to be set by a joint order of the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education and Research, which did not exist on the date of publication.
Accrediting a placement site is a different procedure from accrediting the hospital itself, and the National Authority for Quality Management in Healthcare has just rewritten the second one: the 3rd edition of the standards brings 433 requirements and an assessment along four dimensions, from capacity to improvement.
The clinical placement also includes duty shifts. Year II has 8 duty shifts of 12 hours each, year III has 6. Year I has none. The 14 duty shifts add up to 168 hours and are counted towards the clinical instruction hours of the modules on internal medicine, surgery, anaesthesia and intensive care, obstetrics and gynaecology, mental health and emergencies.
Article 3 places the task of carrying out the order with two directorates-general in the ministry, the National Centre for Curriculum and Assessment, the National Centre for the Development of Vocational and Technical Education, the county school inspectorates and the schools. The order sets no date of entry into force, so it applies from publication, under Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 on the rules of legislative drafting, which provides that normative acts of the heads of central public administration bodies enter into force on the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, unless they lay down a later date.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The plan in force until now was approved by Order of the Minister of National Education no. 3.499/2018, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 428 of 21 May 2018. The yearly totals are identical: 1,456, 1,600 and 1,592 hours. Identical too are the division of the school year into 42 weeks, the number of theory and placement weeks in each semester, the number of hours per week, 31 and 33 in year I and 32 in each of years II and III, and the number of duty shifts. The architecture of the hours has been left untouched.
What has changed are the modules. Module 1, called Elements of Statistics and Medical Informatics in 2018 and worth 28 classroom hours, becomes Medical Informatics, Digitalisation and e-Health, rises to 68 hours and gains 40 hours of clinical placement, in which pupils work with the electronic patient record, with hospital information systems and with teleconsultation. Those 40 hours come out of module 14: the former General Nursing 1 becomes General Principles of Person-Centred Nursing Care and drops from 408 to 368 hours. General Nursing 2 becomes Evidence-Based Care Theories and Practices and stays at 408 hours, but with the placement split across both semesters rather than concentrated in the second.
Two other modules change their names without changing their hours. Hygiene, Infection Prevention and Control becomes Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, even though the content on the surveillance and containment of healthcare-associated infections stays in the curriculum, definitions, transmission routes and epidemiological surveillance rules included. Community Nursing and Care of Persons with Disabilities becomes Community Nursing Care, and home care for chronic patients, older people and persons with disabilities also stays in the content. The old name survived in a single place, in the heading of the correlation table of module 37.
The second substantive change is not visible in the names but in the columns. In 2018, 2,035 hours were entered under theory and only 205 under technological laboratory. In the new plan, 910 hours remain under theory, while 1,125 move to technological laboratory taught by the teacher, alongside the same 205 hours of laboratory with a practical training teacher. No total moves, yet 1,125 hours that used to be lectures become, on paper, laboratory work. Since the laboratory is done at school, not at the patient’s bedside, the hours stay on the theoretical training side, so the proportions required by the directive do not change.
The way the curriculum is approved has changed as well. In 2018, a single order approved the vocational training standard, the curriculum plan and the curricula. This time the standard came separately, through Order of the interim Minister of Education and Research no. 3.206/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 163 of 3 March 2026, with the plan and the curricula only now. The curricula incorporate the competences rewritten by Delegated Directive (EU) 2024/782, which amended Article 31(6) of Directive 2005/36/EC and which the Member States had to transpose by 4 March 2026. In the modules, these competences are marked in italics, and those from Directive 2013/55/EU in bold.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The figures add up. Every row of the three tables and every column total checks out: the 39 modules come to exactly 1,456, 1,600 and 1,592 hours, and the hours per week multiplied by the theory weeks give exactly the theory and laboratory subtotals. The only exception is the year III footnote flagged below.
- Medical informatics leaves the classroom. The 40 new hours of clinical placement are spent on the electronic record, on the hospital information system and on telemonitoring, that is on what a nurse actually uses on shift.
- The competences required by European law are not left in the preamble. They are written into the curricula and marked typographically, so a teacher can see which provision of the directive each piece of content answers to.
- Phasing the plan in protects the cohorts already under way. Nobody changes a pupil’s plan in the middle of the three-year cycle.
- Clinical training remains substantial: 2,408 hours, that is 52 per cent of the total, and in year III the pupil spends 22 weeks out of 42 on placement.
What remains a problem
- The margin over the European threshold is 48 hours out of 4,648, under one per cent. One placement week lost per year, for whatever reason, uses it up.
- The year III footnote gives a number of weeks that contradicts the table above it, and the difference is 320 hours.
- The clinical placement may be done only on the territory of Romania and only in Romanian, for a qualification whose whole European point is free movement. Professional Communication in a Modern Language gets 22 hours over three years, the fewest in the entire plan, alongside Pedagogy and Management.
- The accreditation of placement sites is left to a joint order of the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education, for which the act sets no deadline, even though the year I placements start in this school year.
- The order does not expressly repeal the 2018 plan and says nothing about pupils who repeat a year or come back after a break in their studies, which is to say exactly those who would move from one plan to the other.
- No ECTS credits are awarded, even though the abbreviation is explained in the glossary of the annex and the directive allows the three years to be expressed in credits as well. Without them, equivalence abroad is still settled on hours and on the transcript of records.
Practical advice
- If you started year I in September 2026, your plan is the new one. The table of hours for each module is in Official Gazette of Romania no. 760 bis of 8 September 2026, on pages 76 and 77 for year I, 78 for year II and 79 and 80 for year III.
- If you are in year II or year III in 2026-2027, you stay on the plan approved in 2018 until you graduate. Nothing changes for you during the year.
- If you are thinking of working in another European Union country, keep your transcript of records and the certificate showing the number of hours of theoretical and clinical training. Automatic recognition of the diploma rests on the figures, not on the name of the qualification.
- In year III, ask your school for the clinical placement timetable across 22 weeks, 11 per semester, as the heading of the table states. The footnote underneath says 14 weeks and is wrong.
- Check that the duty shifts you work are recorded in the placement hours. The 14 duty shifts in years II and III mean 168 hours that count towards clinical training.
- Heads of post-secondary schools: ask the partner healthcare unit in writing for proof of accreditation, because the annex makes the placement conditional on it, while the dedicated standards for accrediting placement sites have not yet appeared.
Frequently asked questions
From when does the new curriculum plan apply?
What happens to the pupils who are now in year II or year III?
How many hours does training as a nurse responsible for general care come to in total?
Why does the figure of 4,600 hours matter?
Does the new plan clear the European thresholds?
Where can I find the curriculum plan itself?
How many modules are there and how are they split across the years?
What are the duty shifts and how many do pupils work?
Can I do the clinical placement in another country?
Does the order repeal the 2018 plan?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Annex, curriculum plan for year III, footnote 3, Official Gazette of Romania no. 760 bis page 80: the number of placement weeks does not square with the total in the same table. The footnote says that, in year III, clinical instruction „are prevăzut 952 de ore pe parcursul a 14 săptămâni”, that it provides for 952 hours over 14 weeks, at „câte 40 de ore pe săptămână plus 6 gărzi a câte 12 ore”, 40 hours a week plus 6 duty shifts of 12 hours each. The arithmetic does not work out: 14 weeks at 40 hours make 560 hours, plus 72 hours of duty shifts, 632 in all, not 952. The figure of 952 comes out of 22 weeks, that is exactly the 11 weeks of clinical instruction per semester indicated by the heading of the same table: 22 multiplied by 40 makes 880, plus 72 makes 952. The two numbers exclude each other, and 320 hours lie between them. A school that builds its timetable on the footnote brings total training down to 4,328 hours, below the 4,600 required by Article 31(3) of Directive 2005/36/EC, with 2,088 hours of clinical placement, below the one half of 2,300. The consequence is not pedagogical but legal: that cohort would lose the automatic recognition of its diploma in the other Member States. The same footnote, with the same figure, appears identically in the 2018 plan as well, so the error has been circulating unchanged for eight years.
Editorial analysis
The plan clears the European thresholds, but the margin is far smaller than it looks. The clinical placement hours fall into two parts: 56 weeks at 40 hours make 2,240 hours at the patient’s side, and the 14 duty shifts of 12 hours add 168. The sum, 2,408, passes the one half required by the directive. Without the duty shifts, however, clinical training would be exactly 2,240 hours, that is below the threshold of 2,300, and the total would be 4,480 hours, below 4,600. In other words, the European compliance of the whole qualification rests on 14 night shifts. The coincidence is odd in another way too: the theory and laboratory hours also come to 2,240, precisely as many as the placement hours without the duty shifts.
The second thing that shows up only when the two plans are placed side by side is that the architecture of the hours was never reopened. The review group worked, according to the annex, between 2024 and 2026, rewrote module names, moved 1,125 hours from one column into another and brought in the competences from Delegated Directive (EU) 2024/782. The yearly totals, however, stayed as they were in 2018, down to the last figure, and along with them the wrong year III footnote was copied over as well. A review that had recalculated the hours would have run into it in the first few minutes, because it is the only place in the whole plan where two numbers on the same page cannot be reconciled.
That leaves the timing. The vocational training standard appeared on 3 March 2026, one day before the deadline by which Romania had to transpose the delegated directive. The plan and the curricula, meaning the part that turns into a timetable and a class register, appeared on 8 September 2026, one day after the first day of classes. The first cohort trained entirely under them leaves in the summer of 2029, five years after the directive was adopted. For an act that changes no total of hours, the delay cannot be explained by the difficulty of the arithmetic.
What should be changed
- Correcting footnote 3 of the year III plan. Replacing the 14 weeks with 22 removes the only contradiction of figures in the act and spares schools a reading that would take their graduates out of automatic recognition.
- A deadline for the joint order of the Minister of Health and the Minister of Education on the accreditation of placement sites. Without one, the condition in the annex is applied on the basis of the general accreditation of hospitals, and schools pick their partners on their own responsibility, while year I pupils are already on placement.
- Express repeal of Order no. 3.499/2018, with a date. A provision stating that the 2018 order is repealed on 1 September 2028, when the last cohort trained under it finishes year III, would be enough.
- A rule for pupils who repeat a year or come back from a break in their studies. They are the only ones who can end up with years completed under one plan and the following year under the other, and the act does not say which modules are recognised for them.
- An explicit total of the hours over the three years, set beside the thresholds in the directive. The annex states in its text that the programme „include 4.600 de ore”, that it includes 4,600 hours, but the tables give 4,648, and the reader has to add up alone to see that the threshold is exceeded and by how much. One summary row would make the check possible for any inspector and for any pupil.
- Correcting numbers 2 and 16 in the table of learning outcome units, on page 73. There, module 2 appears as Professional Communication in a Modern Language and module 16 as Embryology and Genetics, the reverse of the curriculum plan and of the 39 curricula, which number them the other way round. That table is also where one reads which units are general technical and which specialised, so the mistake is not merely one of numbering.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 760 of 8 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 113 KB the act starts on page 15
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