Respiratory Sleep HERMES: new considerations in project development

Abstract

The respiratory sleep HERMES task force: Wilfred de Backer, Paolo Palange, Anita Simonds, Stefan Andreas, Johan Verbraecken, Winfried Randerath, William Donic, Renata Riha, Mary Morrell, Ha Trang, Patrick Levy, Walter Mc Nicholas, Marisa Bonsignore Launched in 2009, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Respiratory Sleep HERMES project aimed to design and implement core educational activities supported by a network of initiatives to standardise training and education in respiratory sleep medicine (fig. 1). Figure 1 The HERMES structure for developing standardised training and education in specialist areas of respiratory medicine. Using the framework established by HERMES, the project task force has begun to move through each development phase successfully publishing a syllabus of what a respiratory sleep specialist should know [1], and supporting these modules through the publication of the ERS Handbook of Respiratory Sleep Medicine [2]. Perhaps the greatest challenge of the HERMES initiative is the application of a standardised methodology to medical specialties that are in essence different. To date, seven HERMES projects have been launched (fig. 2). The training characteristics vary from skills-based training, services-based training and sub-specialty or tertiary-based training. For each project, all healthcare professionals are considered from medical physicians and multidisciplinary teams to non-medical practitioners. Figure 2 HERMES Project family 2005–2012. The purpose of this editorial is to revisit how the …