Book excerpt: High-quality rehabilitation care represents a constitutive element of health systems worldwide. The harmonization of staff education both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level is a key element for ensuring the highest standard of rehabilitation care. International bodies, like the UEMS Board for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM) or the International Society for PRM, have already delivered regulatory documents setting standards in postgraduate PRM education. The implementation of such rules is to be validated worldwide with special attention to low and middle income countries. This Research Topic aims to stimulate awareness in the scientific community, especially for those involved in postgraduate education and policy-making decisions. It will highlight the need for developing competency-based education as a powerful mechanism to align education and training with health system priorities. This holds particular value for resource-limited countries, where the knowledge and skills of rehabilitation doctors need to reflect not only the population's health profile, but also the strengths and weaknesses (e.g. workforce gaps and maldistributions) of the health system. This goal can be achieved through sharing experiences between those who have engaged themselves in the process of program development, curriculum design and competency-based education in rehabilitation. Over the last 25 years the number of papers addressing the issue of residency education in PRM has exponentially increased testifying the interest towards the role of rehabilitation and, more specifically, of the PRM doctors as leaders of the rehabilitation team.