There is a trend towards increasing specialisation within surgery which has progessed to different degrees in different parts of the EU and some of the fields encompassed by the EBS have become recognised in some countries as well-defined or even totally independent surgical specialties.
The trend towards greater specialisation is supported by the EBS whenever consistent with improved standards of clinical practice and training. However, in order to meet the needs of the many European hospitals which are not large enough to justify the highly compartmentalised departments of surgery that have become the norm in most teaching centres it is essential to ensure that surgeons are able to obtain broadly based training across all the various fields. This makes it essential for newly emerging surgical specialties to continue to collaborate closely within the well-defined framework of the EBS.
In order to encourage beneficial specialisation, while maintaining the integrity of surgery as a whole, it is the policy of the EBS to establish Surgical Specialty Boards to accomodate the special requirements of well defined areas of surgical practice. Surgical Specialty Boards have rersponsibility for establishing and monitoring standards of training within their specific field of surgery while the EBS functions as a common "envelope" to coordinate the interrelationship, recommendations and actions of the surgical Specialty Boards as they develop. The EBS will require input for the Specialty Boards in common trunk training. It is empowered to issue European Board Certificates of Quality of Training (EBSQ) in the surgical specialties on the recommendation of its Surgical Specialty Boards.
