Spain's emergency and intensive care nurses will get a specialty of their own
Spain's national health system agreed on 26 October to start the process of creating a Critical Care, Urgent and Emergency Nursing specialty: a two-year residency in intensive care units, emergency departments, ambulances and coordination centres. It is only the start of the process, and there is no date yet for the first training places.
The person caring for a critically ill patient in an ambulance, an emergency department or an intensive care unit is often a nurse. In Spain, that work is finally getting its own official training: on Monday 26 October the Human Resources Committee of the National Health System, where the Ministry of Health and the regions sit together, agreed to start creating a Critical Care, Urgent and Emergency Nursing specialty.
It is the first step of the process. The regulation creating it and its final training programme are still to come, and there is no date yet for the first places.
From the ambulance to the ICU, in two years
It will be two years of training through Spain’s nursing residency system (EIR), like the other nursing specialties. Residents will rotate through intensive care units, hospital emergency departments, mobile emergency units and healthcare coordination centres, combining practice, theory, clinical simulation and continuous assessment by their tutors.
They will learn triage, how to spot early that a patient is getting worse, basic and advanced life support, ventilation care, coordinating transfers and responding to mass-casualty incidents and disasters. The aim is for care to be equally specialised from first contact to admission to intensive care. The ministry sums up the goal as greater patient safety and continuity of care.
A request from nurses themselves
The proposal was put forward jointly by the Spanish Society of Intensive Care and Coronary Unit Nursing (SEEIUC) and the Spanish Society of Emergency Nursing (SEEUE). According to the ministry, the new specialty “is a recognition of the nurses who work in critical care units”.
It will be the eighth nursing specialty recognised in Spain, alongside midwifery, mental health, occupational health, geriatrics, family and community, medical-surgical and paediatrics.
Specialists who don’t always work as such
The recognition comes with unfinished business: according to the ministry, only 34.5% of specialist nurses currently work as specialists, and, except for midwives, each region applies its own criteria to recognise them. The next step will be the text of the regulation and the training programme, which will set when the first residency places are offered.
Plenary session of the Interterritorial Council, 23 October 2026. Photo: Ministerio de Sanidad.
Sources
- Infobae · Sanidad creará una nueva especialidad de Enfermería de Críticos, Urgencias y Emergencias (26 October 2026, in Spanish)
- Gaceta Médica · Sanidad inicia la tramitación de la nueva especialidad (26 October 2026, in Spanish)
- Redacción Médica · Sanidad aprueba la ampliación del EIR (26 October 2026, in Spanish)
- ConSalud · Sanidad confirma la creación de la especialidad (26 October 2026, in Spanish)
