Health professional mobility in Europe has become a fast moving target
for policy makers. It is evolving rapidly in direction and magnitude as
a consequence of fundamental change caused by EU enlargement and the
financial and economic crisis.
Health professional mobility changes the numbers of health professionals
in countries and the skill-mix of the workforce, with consequences for
health system performance. Countries must factor in mobility if they are
forecasting and planning their workforce requirements. To this end they
need clarity on mobility trends and the mobile workforce, and effective
interventions for retaining domestic and integrating foreign-trained
health workers. Health professional mobility remains an unfinished
agenda in Europe, at a time when the repercussions of the financial
crisis continue to impact on the European health workforce and its
patterns of mobility.
This book sheds new light on health professional mobility in this
changing Europe. It is the second volume of the PROMeTHEUS project,
following the previously published country case study volume. The 14
thematic chapters in this book are grouped in three parts:
* The changing dynamics of health professional mobility
* The mobile individual
* Policy responses in a changing Europe
The book goes well beyond situation analysis as it presents practical
tools such as a yardstick for registry methodology, a typology of mobile
individuals, qualitative tools for studying the motivation of the
workforce and a set of concrete policy responses at EU, national and
organizational level including bi-lateral agreements, codes and
workplace responses.
