The Nursing Qualifications (EEC Recognition) Order 1979 became law on 1 January 1980. The theoretical content of the training programme in the Nursing Directives should not cause any difficulty in the UK. It is the organization of practical experience for learners that is producing problems. Learners must now obtain clinical experience in maternity care, community care, mental health care and psychiatry, and care of the old as well as in medicine, surgery and paediatrics. Clinical teachers will have to be reallocated from acute areas to these specialist areas, with appropriate retraining. More attention will have to be paid to the basic teaching course for nurse teachers and to continuing education.