| Objectives | Measures |
| Better health workforce intelligence and planning | Measures include investing in health workforce intelligence (incl. on stock, composition, flows, regional distribution, vacancies, motivations), in demographic scenario modelling, and in mobility data; coordinating planning with training institutions and provider organizations. |
| Training and adapting today’s workforce | Measures include continuous professional development; re-skilling; redefining skills in line with population needs; life-long learning. |
| Training tomorrow’s workforce | Measures include attracting (young) people to healthcare; steering students to shortage professions; investing in educational capacity; allocating senior staff time to teaching; adapting curricula to demography and disease profiles; lifting or re-evaluating educational quotas. |
| Domestic recruitment | Include entry stage measures to attract new graduates/recruits to domestic jobs by creating opportunities for employment, professional development and career progression, as well as measures to encourage return to practice with financial incentives, retraining courses, and mentoring. |
| Better regional distribution within the country | Measures include promoting networks and extended team work; setting up contact points; guaranteed employment; housing and social benefits; regional investment. |
| Retention | Measures include creating supportive and safe workplaces; flexible working hours; professional autonomy; expansion of roles; remuneration; grants in exchange for working in the system after specialization; career progression. |
| Policy options to manage mobility |
| Ethical recruitment practices | Introduction and implementation of guidelines and codes at national or international levels, such as the Code, to encourage especially employers to recruit and employ ethically. |
| Country-to-country collaboration | Measures include bilateral agreements between destination and source countries with mechanisms to share training costs, promote circular mobility, provide additional training prior to return, define the type and number of health professionals to be trained for international recruitment and/or encourage professionals to settle down in particular locations. |
| Integration of foreign-trained/born professionals | Measures in destination countries include induction and language courses; mentoring; practical help to settle down in host system; legal frameworks to facilitate recognition and authorization to practise processes; preventing discrimination. |
| Facilitated returns | Measures in or by source countries to encourage returns and to allow returning health professionals to use skills acquired abroad and reintegrate the workforce, e.g. by offering concrete employment opportunities. |
| EU action to address the consequences and opportunities of free mobility |
| Better mobility data | Investing in mobility “R&D” including updated flow data; mapping exercises of national policies to address mobility; data on migrant itineraries and motivations; evaluation of instruments, e.g. bilateral agreements and codes of practice including the Code and their implementation at national and organizational levels; mobility impact assessments. |
| Joint planning and workforce development | Measures include investing in European health workforce intelligence and regional forecasting models; introducing EU-wide CPD programmes; coordinating training capacity and health workforce production. |
| Protecting vulnerable health systems | Measures include an EU compensation fund to compensate for training costs in source countries; EU structural and cohesion funding and technical support to strengthen vulnerable health systems in source countries. |
| Protecting/promoting mobility | Measures include monitoring adherence to freedom of movement and anti-discrimination; EU-funded scholarships targeting specific disciplines/regions; mechanisms for knowledge and skill transfers between Member States. |
