Medical specialisation

A medical practitioner who passed the professional exam can only be specialised for a certain branch of medicine. Specialisation is concluded with a specialist exam.

Medical specialisation is a form of post-graduate professional training, which is required for additional and profound acquisition of knowledge and skill in one of the medical or dentistry branches.

Specialised education for an individual type of specialisation is acquired during time-determined training and with successful completion of the specialist exam.

The part of internship that applies to the specialisation programme is partially or entirely considered in the specialisation programme of a medical practitioner.

The specialisation contents are prepared by the Slovenian Medical Association and adopted by the Medical Chamber of Slovenia with consent from the minister. The programme of individual specialisations determines:

• the scope of knowledge and skills that a medical trainee specialist must master until the end of specialisation;
• the content and duration of the implementation of individual parts of specialisation;
• other contents and procedures for performing individual specialisations.

Specialisation is approved by the Medical Chamber of Slovenia based on a public tender that is implemented for individual areas and determined with regulations on health insurance – regions. With this public tender, the Chamber publishes specialisations for the needs of public health services for individual specialist areas and regions twice in a year. The tender is published on the Chamber's website, the notification is published in the Chamber's newsletter Isis.

Specialist training is implemented at authorised medical services providers in the region for which the public tender was implemented. It is implemented outside the region if there is no authorised services provider for that specific specialisation or if the authorised services provider has no available job post for such training.

The medical trainee specialist is employed for the period of specialisation at a public health institution that is determined by the Medical Chamber of Slovenia, i.e. in the region for which specialisation is performed.

The application for the tender is sent by registered post to the Chamber's address and must contain:

• the evidence on concluded studies at the faculty of medicine in the Republic of Slovenia or the certificate on academic recognition of a foreign medical diploma or the decision on the equality of a foreign title with Slovenian professional title doctor of medicine or doctor of dentistry, acquired in the recognition procedure under the law on the recognition and assessment of education;
• evidence of professional exam, passed in Slovenia, or certificate showing that at least two thirds of the internship programmes was performed in the Republic of Slovenia until the date of the submission of the application;
• statement that the candidate will accept the offer from the public health services provider for first employment as a specialist after finished specialisation in the region, whereby this institution is usually a public health institution, for which the application was submitted, i.e. for a single time period of specialisation;
• medical certificate on preliminary preventive health examination for the specialist post, performed at an authorised occupational, traffic and sport medicine practitioner;
• other certificates required for applying for an individual specialisation (valid family medicine licence, valid paediatrics licence and similar).

The selection criteria are:

• the average grade in undergraduate studies;
• the opinion of previous mentors and recent achievements and references;
• the opinion of the selection commission based on a personal interview with the candidate.

Based on the proposal of the competent official person, the president of the Chamber issues one decision on specialisation for all candidates that have applied for a certain specialisation in a specific region. A trainee specialist can apply for the approval of other specialisation only one time after the specialisation is approved.

Specialisation is implemented at authorised services providers by ensuring the trainee specialist the possibility to acquire the required knowledge and skills of a certain medical or dentistry speciality.

Medical trainee specialists can perform medical services within their specialisation only if guided and under the responsibility of the mentor. During specialisation, a medical trainee specialist can independently perform the work and services for which appropriate knowledge, experience and skills were acquired which is confirmed by a signature of the mentor on the medical trainee specialist's sheet. A medical trainee specialist is responsible for performing such work and services. Mentors are appointed by the Medical Chamber of Slovenia upon the proposal of the authorised specialisation provider.