Bologna Process, more or less: Nursing Education in the European Economic Area. A discussion paper.

The Bologna Declaration and the subsequent processes is the single most important reform of higher education taking place in Europe in the last 30 years. Signed in 1999, it includes 46 European Union countries and aimed to create, a more coherent, compatible, comparable and competitive European Higher Education Area. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Bologna Declaration achievements in nursing education at 2010 within eight countries that first signed the Declaration on 1999. Researchers primarily identified national laws, policy statements, guidelines and grey literature; then, a literature review on Bologna Declaration implementation in nursing was conducted on the Medline and CINAHL databases. Critical analyses of these documents were performed by expert nurse educators. Structural, organizational, functional and cultural obstacles are hindering full Bologna Process implementation in nursing education within European Economic Area. A call for action is offered in order to achieve a functionally unified system within nursing.