Press release on Joint Action Conference Planning and Educating Health Workforce without borders

The opening policy forum of the conference provided interesting insights into European
Health Workforce challenges, mechanism, tools and expertise used to eliminate the
consequences and impact of migration related to labour forces and educational aspects in
various EU countries, evenly covering western, central and eastern European regions.
Policy representatives from Moldova, Slovakia, Belgium and representatives from European
Commission addressed various issues with strong accent on mutual member states
cooperation and knowledge sharing.
First day of the conference tackled the topics of Mobility and Education related to health
workforce. Session on the Mobility of Health Professionals, both from the data perspective
and from the young generation and education perspective aimed at reporting on the recent
major progress on collecting and using mobility data on a regular basis, providing an
accurate image of the phenomenon and singular mix of opportunities and threats to the
health and education systems. The sessions were seeking answers to various questions and
tackling the challenges of monitoring of health workforce mobility information, workforce
education abroad as well as mobility at the European level related to bilateral
cooperation.
Second day was focused on the forecast of new skills that are in support of the health
systems in the future, in the most cost efficient and quality effective way, taking into
account patients’ needs. While the subject is very wide, the mega trends of demographic
changes and changes in population needs were brought into spotlight. A mix between
global reviews and country level examples were selected to address the future changes.
As to the changing demography on health workforce needs the conference concluded that
we need healthcare age – centred and integrated care. Technology can help us but will not
replace health workers. The demographic changes and the ageing of our population is a
common issue at EU and world level, and of course the growing imbalances between
countryside and cities are a long lasting trend.
The connection between the strong EU policies regarding both demographic changes and
Health Workforce should be strengthened. The educational system producing upcoming
generations of health workers needs planning proposals for addressing these challenges.
The conference met its objectives in various aspects and prepared the platform for high
attendance, rich networking debates and interactions among different stakeholders.
Furthermore, the event provided interesting food for thought for policy makers and
contributed to the integration of policies.