Nurse workforce sustainability in small countries: monitoring mobility, managing retention. Policy brief

Overview

This brief has been written for policy-makers, managers and nurses. Its objectives are to examine the interrelated issues of monitoring the mobility of nurses and managing nurse retention, which have emerged as issues from the WHO Europe Small Countries Initiative Human Resources for Health Working Group.

The brief was prepared in 2020 against a backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on the latest evidence on retention and mobility of nurses to provide a policy framework and suggested monitoring tools, while also reflecting that COVID-19 places unprecedented pressures on the nursing workforce and will have an impact on patterns of retention and mobility.

The key messages are that small states face the same complexity of nurse workforce challenges, the same issues of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the same range of potential solutions as other countries, but have to ensure that the bundles of policy interventions they identify, implement and evaluate are relevant to their own unique labour-market situations.