43 www.herba.sk tivities. The participation in those is made compulsory, as provided for by the applicable law (27) and said SK Government regulation (32). The CME/CPD activities in SK are accredited by the Accreditation Council of Slovakia for CME (ACS CME), the national CME/CPD accreditation body. It is connected via an official mutual agreement to the European Accreditation Council of CME (EACCME) of UEMS and thus it is operating according to the corresponding European quality standards. All physicians in SK, including the specialists in CP, are required, in order to retain their ‘licence to practice’ active, to earn the prescribed number of CME credits, with a prescribed part of those earned by taking part in CME activities within their discipline. Fulfilment of this obligation is monitored in five-year evaluation periods by the Slovak Medical Chamber, the official SK medical professionals body issuing the certificates about the physicians’ professional and ethical fitness to practice that are prerequisites to getting the ‘licence to practice’ from the respective State Authorities. The organization of and providing the expertise for the CME/CPD activities belong to the most important and continuous tasks of SSCP (11). Conclusion It may be stated that CP in SK is a well-established, self-standing, clinically/patient-oriented medical specialty. Based upon the positive contributions to the quality of patient-oriented health care, it enjoys a full legal recognition by the State within the systems of health care provision, postgraduate education and training of health care professionals (including CME/CPD), and by the respective health insurance structures. It has successfully established a nation-wide network of CP outpatient offices/departments for the specialized CP health care provision. It was also able to define and have recognized the set of specific CP health care interventions/ services (included into the State guaranteed catalogue). CP is taught in connection with pharmacology at all four SK medical faculties, and the faculty of pharmacy. It possesses a well-established, up-to-date system of postgraduate education and training for medical doctors to become specialists in CP, including the possibility of certification study in the methodology of clinical trials and Good Clinical Practice, and in pharmacoeconomics. Its main assets are the currently active, as well as incoming generation of CP practitioners, providing the CP specialized care to the scores of difficult to treat patients and an innumerable amount of CP consultations to the colleagues of other disciplines. It also has a well-established national professional-scientific association (SSCP of SkMA, the co-founding member of EACPT) with strong international contacts and activities. Moreover, the present emphasis, within the wide-reaching health care optimization reform efforts in SK, placed upon the good prescribing competence of medical practitioners and fostering the implementation of the principles of rational, patient-centred pharmacotherapy, seems to lead to the steadily increasing interest of patients, the colleagues from other medical specialities, and, importantly, of both health care providers (especially hospitals) and health care payers (health insurance companies) in specific CP services. Despite facing some difficult conceptual and almost existential challenges recently, the prospects for CP in SK seem already rather good.* *Paper is Dedicated to the memory of late prof. 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