Planners should focus on retaining staff to fill European workforce shortages

The European Commission is financing the development of an action plan to help tackle serious staff shortages in the European Union.

Isabel de la Mata, a commission representative, said that the actions needed to be cross cutting, going beyond health policy to take into account human resources, education and training strategies, employment, and social and cohesion policies. She urged a large number of EU member states to participate so that data on the current state of the health workforce could be as comprehensive as possible. She was speaking at an international conference in Brussels on 7-9 December on …