Delivering capacity through digital Health Education England’s action learning programme enables individuals to consider workforce planning issues, say Partnerships Managers Finola Preston and Aleksandra Conversano
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ast year, deep in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare capacity was in a dire place. Never before in living memory has there been such a stress on our health systems, and even now, we are really feeling the impact of the workforce problem. In an effort to recognise this issue, the WHO designated the year of 2021 as the ‘International Year of the Health and Care Workers’. This project was vital in highlighting the urgent need to invest in health workers, ensuring their health, jobs, economic opportunity and equity throughout the world.
As such, HEE worked in collaboration with WHO to develop the next generation of system leaders, creating the ‘Workforce Planning and Leadership Development Programme’, comprised of a series of four seminars and seven Action Learning Sets, presented by leaders in the field of workforce planning. These seminars are accessible and open to all, and only require registration. So far, two of these seminars have taken place, with more coming later this year. These ‘Action Learning Sets’ are comprised of 60 participants from seven low and
middle-income countries around the globe, bringing together future influencers and leaders from all corners of the social, economic, and political spheres. “You can’t fix a problem with a tool from the same shed that created the problem,” says Goran Stevanovski, the Chief Medical Education Officer in the Medical Faculty, Skopje, and member of the North Macedonia Action Learning Set. “There are many different people: lawyers, MBAs, MAs, people with varied backgrounds and positions. They are looking at the world in a different way, each bringing something to the table, which is enriching.” Action learning enables individuals to consider real-life workforce planning issues specific to each participating country and encourages them to work together to co-develop solutions. Led by experienced facilitators from the University of Salford, the sessions empower participants to act as advocates for a strategic approach to health workforce planning.
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