The new learning path to the general nurse's occupation under the 1+4 pilot model has now started the first 248 pupils on six secondary health schools. The new model prepared by the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Education, Research, Development and Youth of the Slovak Republic aims to prepare more qualified nurses while fully maintaining European quality standards of education. We need to get more into the system. We need to talk not only about changing staff, but also about increasing capacity, and this cannot be done by some partial accelerated solutions, but by systemic steps, which include this new model. This is not a problem of a distant future. Model 1+4 is a new learning path that preserves all requirements, all standards, as well as the required scope and quality of training, underlined the Minister of Health Kamil Šaško. Since September 1, 2026, the new model starts to be piloted at secondary health schools in Bratislava, Trnava, Žilina, Zvolen, Košice and Prešov. These are schools in different parts of Slovakia, in order to gain real experience from several regions.
The first year is focused on general education and represents the tenth year of general education after completion of primary school. This is followed by four years of vocational training in the field by a general nurse. At school, pupils acquire the expertise and skills they need, then link them to future clinical practice and daily activities, then project directly in the hospital. That is why the quality of the hospital's cooperation with the educational institution is one of the fundamental and absolutely essential preconditions for the success of healthcare professionals' training, - said Minister Kamil Šaško. The model shall be designed to meet the requirements of European Directive 2005/36 on the recognition of professional qualifications, including the scope of at least 4 600 hours of theoretical and practical teaching.
Slovak health, like health systems in most European countries, faces one of the greatest personal challenges - the ageing of the sister population and the lack of new graduates. In Slovakia, there are currently about six sisters per 1 000 inhabitants, with the European Union average significantly higher. At the same time, a significant proportion of current sisters will retire in the coming years. Slovakia will need to replace and supplement almost 20 thousand sisters by 2040.

The new 1+4 model is therefore one of the options to offer young people a more accessible and attractive learning path to the occupation of a general nurse while responding to future medical staff needs. The Ministry will, together with experts, monitor and evaluate the course of education, the results of pupils, the quality of theoretical and practical training and the experience of schools, hospitals, educators and pupils themselves.