The National Strategic Framework for Health and Social Care Workforce Planning was launched at the opening ceremony of the Global Forum for Human Resources for Health, which runs until this Friday in the RDS in Dublin and is being attended by 1,000 policy-makers and researchers from around the world.\ud
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Speaking at the launch, Minister Harris said; “Health workers are the backbone of sustainable health systems and increasing the recruitment and retention of staff is key to the future development of our health service. This new Framework will support an approach to workforce planning that will enable us to recruit and retain the right mix of health workers, across the health system. With a growing and ageing population this approach is essential if we are to meet the planned and projected need.\ud
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“The new Framework was developed by a Cross-Sectoral Steering Group, led by my Department and including key Government Departments and agencies in the health, education and children’s sectors, in addition to health workforce researchers and academics. A full public consultation process was carried out over the summer period and the framework was finalised taking stakeholder feedback into account. I want to thank all those involved for this very important piece of work.\ud
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“The objective of the Framework is to identify, agree and implement appropriate solutions to health workforce challenges – either within the health sector or inter-sectorally with education and other partners. As in many parts of the world, the health sector in Ireland is experiencing challenges in the recruitment and retention of health professionals, including doctors and nurses. Globally the WHO predicts a deficit of 18 million skilled health workers by 2030.\ud
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“The Framework will be implemented over a number of years, with an action plan for the first 18 months, which focuses on the early actions we need to take to build health workforce planning capacity in the health sector, and enhance engagement between the health and education sectors. We must all now work together to deliver the health services needed by our citizens now and in the future.