According to the 2005/36/EC Directive, medical studies must have duration of 6 years or 5500 hours. The Bologna Declaration indicates that curricula must be adapted to the European Higher Education Area before the year 2010. This process implies the establishment of final learning outcomes or competences of the medical graduate which have already been defined by the deans of Spanish medical schools. The Task Force has established learning objectives that contribute to the acquisition of these competences.

Physiology contributes with other disciplines to the acquisition of generic competences (providing basic scientific thinking that allows the students to establish reasonable hypothesis about observed facts, to use the information resources, to apply knowledge to problem solving, etc.). Physiology also contributes to the specific medical competences by providing the knowledge necessary to understand the normal function of the organism, the integration processes as the basis of homeostasis and the basis of physiopathology and pharmacology. Moreover, this knowledge is critical also to understand the basis and to provide the skills for the functional exploration of body systems. The document specifies a central core of physiology learning objectives (knowledge and skills), which could then be applied by the different medical schools and physiology departments following their own teaching strategies. However, the Task Force recommends that Physiology should be as much as possible taught in an integrated form both horizontally and vertically, incorporating active learning methodologies and some elemental clinical aspects as soon as possible, and using ICT.