Published 17 December 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a3047
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a3047

News

Improving workforce is crucial to viability of Europe’s health services, commission says

Rory Watson

1 Brussels

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The European Commission has launched a consultative green paper setting out the challenges that it thinks national health services will face in the coming decades, particularly with regard to workforce issues.

The 15 page document aims "to increase the visibility of the issues facing the EU health workforce, to generate a clearer picture of the extent to which local and/or national health managers face the same challenges and to provide a better basis for considering what could be done at EU level to address these problems effectively."

The commission says that, against the background of an ageing population, rising healthcare costs, and raised expectations from citizens and patients, the European Union needs a high quality workforce if its health systems are to remain successful. It also points to the contribution that the healthcare and social care sector makes to the European economy, providing employment for one in 10 of the . . . [Full text of this article]


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