Aiming to provide a wide range of expert advice to the European Commission on issues related to the health workforce in Europe, the European workforce for health expert group (Former Workforce for Health Working Group of the High Level Group on Health Services and Medical Care) met today, 17 June 2015, in Brussels, to discuss some key concerns: continuous professional development (CPD) of health professionals; effective retention and recruitment strategies; and sustainability of the Joint Action on health workforce planning and forecasting.
As regards CPD, the expert group was briefed on the results of DG SANTE survey aiming to identify topics for exchange of practices in continuous professional development of health professionals. The survey shows that a majority of the respondents are interested on CPD in relation to patient safety and healthcare outcomes, as well as on barriers and incentives to CPD. Discussing the next steps, the expert group expressed their interest in working on the relationship of CPD and patient safety. The Spanish Ministry of Health will take the lead on chairing a next meeting on that topic in September 2015.
On the item on retention and recruitment, the focus went to the European Commission study to map recruitment and retention of the health workforce with key results and recommendations presented. Although the recommendations of the study are very general, there is a very worth noting Finnish case study on advanced roles for nurses. Ms Johanna Pekkilä, from the Health Center of Jyväskylä, presented her experience leading a nurse oriented care provision where nurses had advanced their scope of practice and acquired competences to coordinate and lead a healthcare centre that has improved the waiting lists and the care that patients received. The nurses receive first the patient and evaluates whether seeing a physician is needed or whether it is better to have a nursing consultation or a referral with other professionals (physiotherapists, mental health nurse, social worker, etc.).
The OECD also presented the results of the 2015 OECD/Eurostat/WHO-Europe data collection on health workforce migration. In 2015 they started to collect data on workforce migration and it is interesting for countries to see where their workforce is going and the workforce capacity they are building which is relevant for their planning and forecasting.
Participating in the meeting, the EFN stressed that political willingness and clear investments are needed to build up a high quality and motivated health workforce. Two conditions that, although might be hard at the beginning, are absolutely paying off in the long run in the best interest of improving quality and providing better healthcare to the EU citizens.