Event highlights
As part of its ongoing technical assistance to the Romanian Ministry of Health, WHO/Europe, in collaboration with the Romanian National Authority for Quality Management in Health (ANMCS), successfully concluded a blended training programme focused on advancing quality assurance and improvement in health services.
Held throughout October and early November 2025, the initiative featured a series of 5 interactive webinars and a final face-to-face workshop hosted by the WHO Country Office in Romania. The programme engaged approximately 20 ANMCS staff members from various departments to explore key themes in quality of care, including:
- understanding the evolving quality of care landscape in the WHO European Region;
- exploring ANMCS’s role in driving systems change, from regulation to transformation;
- introducing WHO tools and frameworks to support daily practice and strategic planning; and
- fostering a shared vision and language across ANMCS teams to promote coherence and collaboration.
The sessions were co-led by experts from the WHO Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety in Athens, alongside international and national speakers. Each webinar included practical case examples, facilitated discussions and tailored think-tank sessions, to support Romania’s strategic priorities in health system transformation. The webinars covered key themes, including:
- quality of care for health systems of the future;
- co-designing national quality of care policies and strategies;
- learning and safety culture;
- advancing people-centred health services, with a focus on people’s voice and child/adolescent mental health; and
- accreditation for what matters to people.
The final workshop featured case-based exercises to explore SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) quality indicators and strengthen leadership and safety culture in health services. It provided an opportunity for participants to apply concepts in real-world scenarios, co-develop improvement strategies and reflect on lessons learned.
Participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with most respondents rating the programme highly for meeting expectations, the quality of its structured content and the expertise of its facilitators. Participants reported gaining new knowledge and skills, and valued the interactive format, which encouraged active engagement throughout the training.
The ANMCS President, Valentin Ciocan, emphasized the importance of this collaboration in driving systemic change: “Embedding quality and safety into health services is essential for Romania’s health system transformation”.
This joint programme marks a significant step in Romania’s efforts to have quality of care and patient safety at the heart of care delivery, in line with the WHO European Programme of Work and the global movement towards universal health coverage.