The health and social sectors are not working in silos, which was the clear message to the Commissioner. EFN & IFSW want grass root policy-making, bottom up approaches with the main ambition to support fieldwork.
The EFN and IFSW Presidents, Marianne Sipilä and Cristina Martins, met the Commissioner for health, Dr Vytenis Andriukaitis, and discussed with him the Ebola preparedness in the EU. Capacity Building in all EU Member States (Council Conclusions) to select the appropriate material and implement protocols are key for preparedness, safety and trust in the health systems in the EU. The EFN will map gaps in the daily practice of health professionals in EU Member States on preparedness and will present the results to the European Institution when available. Both Marianne and Cristina thanked the Commissioner for his immediate visit to Africa to see with his own eyes what was happening during the Ebola outbreak. Good policy-makers move to the field in order to develop the best political strategies! If not, politicians stay in an atmosphere of talk and theory, something patients and health professionals will not benefit from. The commissioner is passionate, practical and up to the point.
Furthermore, the EFN and IFSW delegation discussed ENS4care, a European project on eHealth services in nursing and social care led by EFN, in which IFSW plays a crucial role. The aim of this project is to develop EU guidelines in prevention, clinical practice (e.g. COPD), continuity of care, ePrescribing and advanced roles for nurses and social workers. Providing the evidence for policy-makers & politicians to reform health systems became discussed with the Commissioner as primary care developments are central to a bottom up health system reform. We need to move from local success stories from all Member States, upgrading by empowering fieldwork.
Finally, patient safety & quality of care, including the workforce needed in the health and social care sector, became a priority in the political exchange of views between the Commissioner and both IFSW and EFN. The Commissioner stressed the importance of mutual recognition of professional qualifications and the key challenges of brain drain. Therefore, the Commissioner appreciated concrete examples coming from EU-level stakeholders, representing millions of fieldworkers. Without appropriate stakeholder engagement, there will be no successful policy outcomes and no trust built among EU citizens.
We finally underlined the importance of DG Sanco, and the Commissioner leading change so citizens benefit immediately, not in 2020.