[Qualification characteristics of specialists--graduates of medical and pharmaceutical institutes]

The development of medical education is associated with scientific elaboration of a system of periodically renewed requirements for specialists training quality, introduction of new methods and means for objective assessment of their professional competence. The present dectarative, non-constructive and non-classifying nature of qualification characteristics for graduates of medical and pharmaceutical institutes necessitated the carrying out of investigations aimed at the elaboration of a new system of qualification characteristics capable to fulfill the function of scientifically substantiated quality standards of higher medical education for every specialty. The paper describes the evolution of methodological approaches to the making of these documents, considers their new structural peculiarities, provides the technology of their projecting, determines their place in the target system of continuous medical education. The major peculiarity of a new system of qualification characteristics is the adequacy of targets to the requirements for the performance of specialists in applied public health, the possibility of estimating or evaluating the achievement of targets, the possibility of projecting these targets with the help of through programmes of specialties in the educational process by their specification in intermediate targets of training which are the basis for improving the system of training at all stages. The authors analyse the international experience and outline the prospects for the use of new ideas in future work on qualification characteristics. Recommendations are made to use the proposed methodology for correcting qualification characteristics in the system of secondary medical education and in the system of postgraduate training of physicians and pharmacists.