The World Health Organisation’s Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030 emphasises the importance of dynamic and effective health practitioner regulation in assiting the achievement of SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing. It points to the role of health practitioner regulation in both optimizing the existing health workforce and in better aligning health workforce investments with health system needs.
In recent years, regulatory mechanisms and resources across WHO the Member States have experienced substantial stress due to the increasing volume and privatization of health professional education; rising importance of previously unregulated occupations including care workers; the emergence of new occupations; emergencies, and humanitarian crises; accelerating international mobility; new modes and cross border service delivery (e.g. use of digital technology); increasing focus on team-based and integrated networks for service delivery; as well as increasing consumer demand, expectation and knowledge.
The occupational regulation of health workers does not respond solely to the imperative of patient safety. It is increasingly recognized – nationally and globally – as a core mechanism to ensure health workforce availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality.
Michelle Rumsey, the Director at the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre at the University of Technology Sydney was invited to the WHO Technical Expert Group on Health Practitioner Regulation, where her perspective and expertise was highly valuable in supporting the development of guidance that seeks to support the Member States in the design, reform, and implementation of health practitioner regulatory systems that meet population health needs.
The envisaged guidance will be the first comprehensive global guidance from WHO on health practitioner regulation, with an explicit focus on advancing health system priorities.
The WHO Technical Expert Group on Health Practitioner Regulation will act as an advisory body to WHO, through the Department of Health Workforce (HWF), towards the development of such guidance. The global guidance will seek to:
- Capture the diversity of health practitioner regulatory systems and respective challenges in ensuring the quality and sustainability of health workforce education and practice;
- Identify innovations in health practitioner regulation including specific reforms related to the overall objectives, institutional framework, regulatory and operational mechanisms, and regulatory capacity;
- Identify empirical evidence, where available, on the impact of innovations in health practitioner regulation;
- Provide recommendations to the Member States on key considerations, common principles, and core elements for the design, strengthening, and implementation of health practitioner regulation.