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In the HOSPEEM newsletter you will find news on HOSPEEM past and future activities, EU projects, social dialogue, events and publications, as well as articles from our members.
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4-5 September 2013, Oslo
The cooperation between HOSPEEM and the World Health Organisation (WHO) on recruitment and retention issues is dynamically developing. Tjitte Alkema, Secretary General of HOSPEEM a second time this year has attended as a speaker a WHO meeting after the Conference on mobility and recruitment of healthcare workers in May in Amsterdam.
The meeting took place in Oslo in September 2013 and was organised in the form of a consultation. It concerned the challenges that High Income Countries (HIC) are facing with regard to the issue of human resources in the healthcare sector. The aim of the consultation was to gather the HIC’s contributions for the upcoming 3rd WHO Global Forum on Human Resources for Health.
In his speech Mr Alkema highlighted the importance of the HOSPEEM-EPSU Code of Conduct on Ethical Cross-Border Recruitment and Retention in the Hospital Sector signed in 2008, two years ahead of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel and the key social partners’ role in that successful initiative. As another example of effective cooperation on healthcare workforce issues between all crucial stakeholders in the sector, including employers’ associations and the government, Mr Alkema indicated current forecasting of the resources demand in the Netherlands. ʽʽIt often seems that WHO and national governments do not easily connect with social partners. For the effective approach to the dilemmas in the field of cross-border ethical recruitment calls for close cooperation with all relevant stakeholders.’’ – said Mr Alkema.
Finally, Mr Alkema stated that ethical cross-border recruitment and retention in the sector requires a broader perspective. This includes providing employees with good working conditions and proper wages that due to austerity programms are at the moment under pressure by government interventions. He also emphasised that delivery of health services in HIC becomes not only a matter of respecting basic human rights. Nowadays we can observe a trend of “consuming” health services which has taken the form of delivering “scarce luxury goods”. In solving the problem of sufficient health care professionals we should consider how far we want to go in fulfilling all the needs in health care demand that do not necessarily align with good quality of life.
Read more about the consultation
After two years of preparation the Joint Action was officially launched. The inauguration meeting gathered together seven Work Packages’ teams, including collaborative partners, representatives of the European Commission and other stakeholders. The main aims of the project are to improve data collection on mobility at EU level; support the healthcare workforce planning and forecasting; estimate future needs in terms of skills and competences; establish a European network for planning and forecasting. HOSPEEM participated in the meeting as a collaborative partner in the Work Package 4 on Data for Healthcare Workforce Planning and the Work Package 6 on Horizon Scanning.
The Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers (NFU) has recently joined HOSPEEM as an observer member.
NFU is the employers’ association representing eight University Medical Centres in the Netherlands. The organisation aims to promote the centers’ shared interests, represent them and reinforce their position through cooperation in areas such as finance, working conditions, politics, research, teaching and patient care.
Except for NFU, the Dutch healthcare sector is represented in HOSPEEM by NVZ which has a full member status.
NFU official website: http://www.nfu.nl/
HOSPEEM has replied to the public consultation launched by the European Commission further to the results of the evaluation of the European Strategy on Safety and Health at Work 2007-2012 (http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?langId=en&catId=699&consultId=13&furtherConsult=yes).
The aim of the consultation is to identify current and future challenges in the occupational safety and health area and instruments to tackle these challenges.
In its reply HOSPEEM supported the approach to define common general objectives for the future health and safety policies at European level. However, the organisation stated that actions in this field have to be targeted on each national situation, legislation, organisation and practice. HOSPEEM emphasised also the importance of social partners’ involvement in the future health and safety-related initiatives.
2–3 May 2013, Amsterdam
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, in cooperation with the Western Pacific Region and the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, organised a meeting on policy dialogue on International health worker mobility and recruitment challenges.
The meeting took place at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam on 2-3 May, 2013. It aimed at analysing the challenges in implementing the WHO Code of Practice on International Recruitment of Health Personnel and identifying policy options, areas of technical cooperation to these challenges.
Among the participants invited for the second day session was Tjitte Alkema, Secretary General of HOSPEEM, who gave a presentation in the panel on “International recruitment and integration of migrant health workers”. It concerned HOSPEEM’s experience in implementation of the EPSU-HOSPEEM Code of Conduct on Cross-border Recruitment and Retention and the context of the Netherlands. The meeting was also an opportunity to discuss future WHO–HOSPEEM cooperation on the recruitment and retention issues.
The technical report of the WHO policy dialogue on international health workforce mobility and recruitment challenges is now avaible online.
The joint HOSPEEM-EPSU project “Promotion and support of the implementation of Directive 2010/32/EU on the prevention of sharps injuries in the hospital and health care sector” has come to an end after a successful final conference in Barcelona.
The final conference saw the participation of around 100 stakeholders from the 27 EU countries and high level speakers, including the European Commission. This was the occasion for HOSPEEM and EPSU to take stock of the outcomes of the regional seminars held in Dublin (31 January), Rome (7 March) and Vienna (16 April) under the project and to discuss the future steps of social partners to make the provisions of the Directive reality at the workplaces in the health care sector and thereby significantly improve the safety and security of health care staff and the patients.
Speaking at the conference, Carola Fischbach-Pyttel, General Secretary of EPSU emphasised that the Sharps Directive clearly shows how the EU Social Dialogue can deliver results which have significant impact not only at European, but also at national level. Social dialogue is an essential instrument of democracy and legitimacy for the EU social partners should not allow the current economic crisis and austerity measures to jeopardise it. Speaking about the HOSPEEM-EPSU Directive, Ms Fischbach-Pyttel highlighted that investment in healthcare is well-spent money. The quality of services and the security and safety of health care workers and patients are paramount not only for the sustainability of the EU healthcare systems but also for the competitiveness of all the European countries and their economies.
Tjitte Alkema, Secretary General of HOSPEEM, highlighted the benefits of working in partnership which lead to negotiate on a very complex subject in a short period, in spite of strong oppositions. This was only possible because of the understanding between the two Social Partners HOSPEEM and EPSU. Mr Alkema stressed that even though the deadline for transposition of the Directive into national legislation has passed, the actual work of social partners for the implementation at the workplace has just begun. A strong commitment from both sides will be essential to achieve the objectives set out in the Directive. In times when the Social Dialogue is challenged both at European and national level, HOSPEEM and EPSU need to show that social partners together can deliver in a time and cost efficient way.
The European Commission represented by François Ziegler and Francisco Jesús Alvarez Hidalgo highlighted that due to the different strains facing the EU Social Dialogue, social partners cannot afford to fail and need to show that they can deliver and implement viable solutions in an effective way. The ownership of the Directive is shared between the sectoral social partners and the European Commission and the EC will do everything possible to support their work and to monitor the effective implementation of the provisions of the directive.
The findings gathered during the conference, together with the results on the implementation progress in the EU Members states, will feed into the final report from the project that will be presented to the European Commission and disseminated soon.
The European Hospital and Healthcare Employers’ Association (HOSPEEM) and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) organised the first regional seminar to promote and support the implementation of Directive 2010/32/EU on the prevention of sharps injuries in the hospital and health care sector. This project is funded by the European Commission.
The seminar took place on 31 January in Dublin and was hosted by the Health Service Executive (HSE) representing the Irish health employers and IMPACT, the Irish Trade Union. The seminar was attended by 90 representatives of employers, employees, national authorities and other stakeholders from 10 countries.
During the seminar a presentation by ICF GHK was made to outline the first result of the survey on the progress so far in the implementation of the directive.
There were also presentations about the transposition of the directive in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom from practitioners and academia representatives. The speakers underlined the importance of continued work on the issue, investment in protective safety equipment, better training and reporting, and the role social partners should play at local, national and European level to prevent sharps injuries.
The presentations were followed by working groups who discussed how best to implement the directive. The groups comprised of employers and employees’ representatives from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The findings gathered at the seminar will be published in the event report in mid-February on the webpage devoted to the project.
Further seminars in the framework of the project will take place on 7 March in Rome and on 16 April in Vienna. The final conference will be held on 20 June in Barcelona.
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For further information, please contact:
HOSPEEM:
Elisa Benedetti +32 2 229 21 58
Ewelina Pysklo +32 2 229 21 57
E-mail: hospeem@hospeem.eu
EPSU:
Mathias Maucher +32 2 250 10 93
E-mail: mmaucher@epsu.org
HOSPEEM is the European Hospital and Healthcare Employers Association. It regroups at European level national , regional and local employers’ associations operating in the hospital and health care sector and delivering services of general interest, in order to co-ordinate their views and actions with regard to a sector and a market in constant evolution. HOSPEEM is an individual member of CEEP.
EPSU is the European Federation of Public Service Unions and the second largest federation of the ETUC, with 8 million public service workers from over 200 trade unions in 45 countries. They organise workers in the energy, water and waste sectors, health and social services and local and national administration. In health and social services EPSU members affiliate about 3.5 million workers.
This project is supported with funds from the European Commission
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