Forty percent of doctors are close to retirement age in a third of countries, meaning the region has at most a decade to deal with the crisis, the UN agency warned. “Without urgent action to replace the current aging workforce, we will face a very serious shortage of health workers in about 10 years or sooner, when a significant portion of physicians will retire,” said Dr. Tomas Zapata, lead author of the exhibition. Covid-19 has exacerbated the crisis – burnout, overtime and an estimated 50,000 deaths of frontline workers in Europe have contributed to an ever-shrinking workforce, the report says. “Staff shortages, poor recruitment and retention, emigration of skilled workers, unattractive working conditions and poor access to continuous professional development opportunities are destroying health systems,” said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.
Shrinking the workforce
In some countries, more than 80 percent of nurses reported some form of psychological distress caused by the pandemic. The WHO said it has received reports that nine out of 10 nurses have indicated their intention to leave their jobs. Dr Zapata, who is also the WHO’s regional adviser on health capacity and service delivery, warned that current and future shortages would have a “severe” impact on patients. “There will be even longer waiting lists and it will be increasingly difficult for patients to access services when they need them,” Dr Zapata said. The British Medical Association said this week that NHS staff shortages are at “crisis”. As of December 2021, more than 110,000 positions were waiting to be filled. “High vacancies create a vicious cycle – shortages create environments of chronic stress, which increases pressure on existing staff and in turn encourages higher turnover and absenteeism,” said Dr Amit Kochhar, vice-chairman of the BMA. To address the situation, the UK has recruited health and care workers from countries such as Zimbabwe, Nepal and the Philippines. Experts have questioned the ethics of such moves, amid accusations that Britain is taking its best talent from countries with fewer doctors per head.
Crisis prevention
In August, Sir Andrew Goddard, then president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “That the UK has to make special deals with other countries to support its own NHS workforce is itself an indicator of how which workforce planning for the NHS has. failed. “What we get from a country [100 nurses from Nepal] that it has a significantly lower number of healthcare workers than many countries is something we should have serious reservations about – the ethics of such an approach is debatable at best,” he added. Despite these criticisms, the WHO supported the UK as a country that is “rising up to the challenge” and taking “bold and innovative steps” in its foreign worker recruitment strategy. When asked about this by the Telegraph, he said he had “no position on UK workforce recruitment policy” and that “there is no one size fits all and each country and health system needs to assess what works and what doesn’t”. “In general, however, WHO recommends that countries assess their workforce situation at the national level and then, if necessary, increase the production of health workers according to national needs,” it said. He added that for international recruitment, the Global Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health Personnel should be followed, which says there should be no recruitment from its “guaranteed” list.
