Background: Higher education should promote critical reflection and guide students towards international activities. In the Nordic countries public health nurse educational programmes are mostly based on guidelines issued by national educational authorities, which describe students' learning outcomes.

Aim: The aim of this paper is twofold: to give an overview of public health nurse education and service in the Nordic countries and thereby discuss opportunities for collaboration within the programmes.

Data sources and compilation of data: National legislations for public health nurse education and services are used as data. Since all sources are written in the language of each country, all the authors wrote the parts that describe each countries conditions in English and contributed to the compilation of data.

Results: We found both similarities and differences in public health nurse education and services. Opportunities for collaboration between the programmes are discussed.

Conclusion: Critical reflection by the public health nurse students can be enhanced by arranging collaboration projects, an exchange of clinical placement, and joint master projects. Collaboration among academic staff within the educational programmes, in education and research, have the potential to enhance quality both within public health nurse education and in developing the profession of public health nursing.