WHO Europe Regional Meeting on the Health and Care Workforce, 22-23 March 2023

23 March 2023

BUCHAREST DECLARATION ON THE HEALTH AND CARE WORKFORCE

We, participants of the WHO Europe Regional Meeting on the health and care workforce in Bucharest, recognize that the health and care workforce is the backbone of any health system, and that countries across the European Region have long faced important workforce challenges.

We note that, despite the historically high numbers of health and care workers across the European Region currently, national health systems are experiencing difficulties to meet the increased demand for health services as a result of: an aging population, increase in chronic diseases, service backlogs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing legitimate expectations from patients.

We take account of the WHO Regional Office’s report “Health and care workforce in Europe: time to act”, and that some of the key workforce challenges facing national health systems include shortages, uneven distribution, developing skills to meet the evolving health and care needs and new technologies. The workforce is also aging and at the same time, labour markets are changing. Some health systems are finding it increasingly difficult to attract and retain young people in the health and care professions.

We note these challenges have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also highlighted the need to protect the mental and physical health and well-being of the workforce. Many health and care workers are experiencing continued stress and burnout, and some are leaving their jobs in many parts of the Region.

We acknowledge that governments are well aware of these challenges and are already taking important measures to address them, and thus call for such measures to be further amplified and strengthened.

In line with the regional report, we call for improving the supply of health and care workers by:

Generating evidence on current and future workforce needs
Supporting health and education institutions to adapt curricula, student selection and learning strategies, and to strengthen their teaching capacity, as well as building capacity for effective regulation and accreditation.
Strengthening continuing professional development (CPD) by adapting CPD standards and approaches and ensuring opportunities are available across the health and care workforce.
Expanding the use of digital tools to deliver more effective, efficient and accessible services.

We call for improving recruitment and retention of health and care workers
- by encouraging the use of measures shown to work at different stages of careers and in different locations.

By ethically and effectively managing policies in line with the WHO Global Code of practice on the International Recruitment of health personnel.
by paying special attention to retaining and attracting health and care workers in rural and other under-served areas.

Taking action to create working conditions that support health and care workers and protect their health and mental well-being. Users and services will benefit when workers are supported.
Paying attention to gender- and age-based differences in workers’ risks and needs such as burn-out, workplace safety, and child-care support.

Taking account of health labour market dynamics, promoting more cross-government and intersectoral action, and by involving wider stakeholder engagement in policy processes.
Strengthening health and care workforce information systems.
Recognizing that women perform the majority of the paid and unpaid health and care work, and that specific action needs to be taken to eliminate gender inequalities, such as gender pay gaps within the health and care workforce, to value unpaid care work and promote actions to engage men, and to promote gender balance in decision-making positions.

We call for increased and smarter public investment in workforce education, development and protection by:

We recognize that for meaningful progress to be made, it is important to involve all key stakeholders, especially representatives of the health and care workforce, and it is in this spirit of co-operation that we put forward this declaration.