- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2021
Health and Social Care Workforce Planning in Ireland
The project "Health and Social Care Workforce Planning in Ireland" aimed to support the Department of Health in strengthening health workforce planning in Ireland, through building technical capacity and providing the necessary tools and procedures, including a health workforce model. This will enable the Department of Health to generate projections of supply and demand for all major categories of health professionals and to develop targeted policy measures to ensure an effective health workforce.
Context
Ireland faces challenges in recruitment and retention of nurses, doctors and other health and social care professionals. Ireland is relying heavily on the immigration of health and social care professionals to the country despite having the highest number of medical graduates per capita in the EU – an unsustainable situation. At the same time, Ireland aims to implement an ambitious health and social care system reform, the Sláintecare Reform Programme, which aims to address many of the challenges the health and social care system is facing.
Support delivered
Technical support was provided to the Irish Department of Health by the providers, in coordination with the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission and funding via the Technical Support Instrument. The project activities undertaken included the following:
- Development of Health and Social Care Workforce Planning Strategy and Action Plan to inform the model development and set out initial recommendations in terms of the project outputs, data considerations and governance.
- Development of Model, Scenarios, Projections and Workforce Supply-Demand ‘Gap’ Analysis.
- Development of Policy Recommendations to address projected workforce gaps.
Completion of Project Final Report and project closing event conference.
Results achieved
The project delivered recommendations for health and social care workforce planning governance to support a population health approach. It provided scenario-based projections of workforce supply and demand and enhanced the Department of Health’s capacity to use and further refine the underlying model. Informed by projections, gap analysis, international good practices, and stakeholder engagement, the project developed policy recommendations to address workforce supply-demand gaps. These recommendations were framed using the five pillars of the WHO’s new framework for action on the health and care workforce in the WHO European Region, ensuring a comprehensive strategy for future workforce planning.
More about the project
You can read the documents related to the project here: