Greater international cooperation needed to address looming shortages of doctors and nurses, says OECD

20/10/2008 - OECD countries should adopt a comprehensive approach to the looming shortage of health workers, reinforce international cooperation and better monitor health workforce policies and international migration of doctors and nurses, according to a new OECD report.

OECD’s  report “The Looming Crisis in the Healthforce: How can OECD countries respond?” emphasizes that OECD countries face a challenge in responding to the growing demand for doctors and nurses over the next 20 years.

On-going efforts to train more health workers and policies aiming at a better use of resources should be pursued and strengthened, the report says. These measures should be accompanied in both sending and receiving countries by policies aimed at improving retention and integration into the health workforce, developing the skill mix and coordinated care, and increasing productivity. Different countries are likely to choose different mixes of these policies, depending, among other things, on the flexibility of their health labour markets, institutional constraints, and cost.

Despite differences in how medical and nursing education is organised, most OECD countries exercise some form of control over student intakes. Intake to medical schools has followed a U-shaped curve in many OECD countries, with a downswing in the 1980s and early 1990s and an upswing around the end of the last decade. Because of the long delay in training, recent migration trends are partly resulting from previous cuts in medical and nursing education, the report finds.

This publication is part of a joint project carried out by the OECD and the World Health Organization (WHO) aiming at presenting a comprehensive account of immigrants in the health sector in OECD countries, in order to better inform the policy dialogue at national and international levels.

With the objective to strengthen international collaboration on international health worker migration and to identify policy options, a Dialogue on migration and other health workforce issues in a global economy will be held in Geneva on 20 and 21 October 2008.

This event, which is being jointly organized by the WHO and the OECD  will bring together Delegates from both higher and lower-income countries, as well as technical experts, and representatives of professional associations and other international organizations that are concerned with this issue to discuss common challenges and identify potential solutions.

For further information or a copy of the report, journalists are invited to contact Peter Scherer, OECD Health Division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 91 98), or Jean-Christophe Dumont, OECD Migration Division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 92 43) or Manuel M. Dayrit, WHO, Director, Human Resources for Health Department (tel. +41 22 791 2428), or Jean-Marc Braichet, Coordinator, Human Resources for Health Department, WHO (tel. +41 22 791 2391).

Further information can be found at www.oecd.org/health/workforce, or http://www.who.int/hrh/migration/who_oecd_dialogue/en/index.html .