INTERNATIONAL WORK FORCE Homework Help

INTERNATIONAL WORK FORCE

There is a growing concern regarding to the unbalanced distribution of health workers between developed and developing nations. The unbalanced distribution of health worker has deprived the poor countries of health workers and has impaired their ability to train and retain replacements (Global Health Blog, 2010). The migration of health workers to other countries necessitates a country to come up public health policy to improve healthcare services. According to WHO statistics, there are currently an estimated 2.4 million health practitioners, nurses and midwifes around the world to provide health care services to patients (Alkire, & Lincoln, 2004).
Shortage of healthcare practitioners requires an adoption of a global approach to improve the numbers of health workers. There are many factors that have contributed to migration and subsequent brain drain of health workers globally. This paper discusses the global policy implications of the shortage of health care workers and the brain drain from poor countries to the developed countries.
Discussion
The world’s healthcare systems are currently facing crisis. This crisis is experienced by both the developing and developed countries’ systems which are at the moment struggling towards meeting the healthcare needs of their citizens. Among the challenges facing both the developing and developing systems, is the inadequate availability of healthcare professionals in their health sector. The developing nations are seen to periodically experience shortages of nurses in their national healthcare system. These shortages are dictated by market forces which in this case the demand is increasing at a faster rate than the supply healthcare professionals. Thus, in these developed countries, there is an increasingly high technology health care and increased demand of health care workers. On the other hand, the developing nations have poor planning and less investment in the education of health workers prompting migration of health care workers to the developed nations (Alkire & Lincoln, 2004). The majority of developing countries that are located in the southern hemisphere have experienced economic policies that have contributed to poor investment in the healthcare sector. This has impacted their health sector for it has resulted to the reduced opportunity of getting education for health care workers (Bach, 2003).
The other factors that have contributed to health workers migration are attributed to poor working conditions coupled with limited economic prospects in their home countries. This has created a situation whereby health workers choose to migrate from their home countries to look for better opportunities in rich nations (Bach, 2003). This has made the developing countries to experience a considerable outflow of health professionals leading to reduced healthcare service provision. The developing nations spend a lot of money educating health workers who later migrate to the developed countries to look for lucrative job opportunities.
This migration of health workers can be viewed as developing nations helping the developed nations in the health sector. It is estimated that developing nations spend approximately $ 500 million yearly to educate health workers who later migrate to other countries such as USA, Europe, and south Asia (Bach, 2003). Healthcare service delivery of developing nations has been greatly weakened by shortage of health workers and risk further collapse. The developed governments tend to receive a lot of benefit resulting from the inflow of healthcare workers in their countries. Some of the benefits include reduction in the inadequacy of skilled healthcare professionals that was experienced by the countries. Bearing in mind that these developed nations’ healthcare systems are facing a shortage, the problem could have clearly been much worse if there were no foreign health professionals. Secondly, the quality of healthcare services provided to the consumers is bound to improve compared to when the shortages are greater in addition, there will be reduced public health risks (Bach, 2003). Lastly, the employment of these immigrant healthcare professionals has the impact of reducing the salary packages of employees in the healthcare sector. This in infect increases the financial benefit of consumers through reduced prices healthcare services, since the labour costs will decrease because of the increased supply of health workers
A resolution by African Ministers of health provided food for thought to the WHO, for they presented their grievance stating that the migration of health practitioners from their countries has greatly crippled their health care systems. The unmonitored movement of health practitioners from poor countries has left these regions with a great need for medical professionals. It has been estimated that over 36% of health care workers stay and work in USA and Canada. It is very ironical since these countries with a large number of health care human resources have the least burden of diseases, less than 10%. This situation contrasts what is experienced in Africa which constitutes only less that 3% of the worlds health care human resources, but has more than 24% of the disease burden globally (Alkire & Lincoln, 2004).
Due to the problems associated with migration of health workers from poor countries to rich countries, developed countries are facing severe shortages particularly in rural areas as health workers move to the rich countries to look for job opportunities. In order to correct the imbalances that currently exist in the healthcare, adequate policies should be designed to protect the right of health workers to migrate legally and ensure a balance in the distribution of health workers globally (Bach,2003). An effort to promote such an approach, involved launching of a Health Worker Migration Policy Initiative.
The Migration Policy Initiative has brought together many healthcare professional organizations to develop codes of practices for the migration of health workers. In addition various individual health care institutions have developed ethical codes of practice to put into consideration an ethical practice in recruitment of health professionals. This initiative intended to focus on the benefits and equitable migration of health professional between developed and developing nations (Buchan and Sochaiski, 2003). In addition, the initiative intends to create national as well as international guidelines to act as a guideline for the migration of health workers through bilateral agreements which are important to ensuring that the least developed countries also benefit from the migration of health practitioners. This type of agreement can be compared with that between UK and South Africa that has allowed for a health care worker exchange that is tie limited, this initiative has led to the pairing of the hospitals from these nations to enhance sharing of best practices in healthcare.
It has been concluded that such initiatives are very important particularly in avoiding brain drain that results from the migration of skilled health care professionals from less developed nations. In addition it also prevents brain waste when the skilled migrants cannot get jobs in their fields of expertise hence ending up in other unrelated jobs that are low paying (Buchan and Sochaiski, 2003). Such international agreements can facilitate implementation of this initiative by improving health workers training in their respective countries of origin and assist employers in the recruiting nations to have a better understanding of cultural diversity, strengths in training, and identify areas where the skilled workers require additional training (Dovlo, and Tim, 2004).
Preventing brain waste may have many implications to the migration of health care workers from the less developed nations to the rich nations. It ensures that migrating health professionals have their skills not wasted and allows them and their countries to benefit from the bilateral agreements. It is necessary to understand how best to integrate the migrant workers into the work place. A code has been developed by WHO that requires governments in both rich and poor countries to address the pull factors that lure workers to migrate to the developed nations and the push factors that make them to stay in their home countries not attractive (Global Health Workforce Alliance, 2011). Enough health workers should be produced and adjustments should be made in the health training programs which should get more funding from the developed nations.
Sources nations, mostly the developing nations have proposed introduction of policy intervention to curb health workers migration in the healthcare labour market. This involved raising the cost of recruiting registered nurses and medical doctors that come from less developed nations (Bach, 2003). This is achieved through imposing taxes or tariff on such transactions with the objective of recovering some of the training costs. However, this has proved to have negative impact and so far there is no country that has implemented this policy.
Conclusion/Summary
In a nutshell, the migration of health workers will continue to take place. Countries with high numbers of healthcare workers emigration are mostly recorded from Sub-Saharan nations which are highly affected by the migration of healthcare workers (Global Health Blog, 2010). Many challenges that face such countries are political, economic instability, and poor governance. Factors such as salaries and benefits are considered in the extremes in the wage differences between the developing and developed nations. For example wages that health care workers obtain in Canada and Australia are more than those earned by health care workers in South Africa. Search for a better income is not the only reason for migration of health practitioners from their home countries to rich nations, other factors include poor working environments that occurs due to heavy workload, poor, and limited organizational capacity.
It is appropriate to work towards developing self sufficiency in the developing countries by the developed world. The Migration Policy Initiative has helped in the equitable migration of health professional between the developed and developing nations. The developed nations need to provide support to the developing countries that have the pool of workers by providing financial assistance to train the health care human resource and improve the health care infrastructure. Through such initiatives, it has been observed that the trained healthcare workers can be retained in their respective home countries. It is imperative for less developed nations to improve the work place conditions for health care workers so that a large number of health care practitioners are retained in their home countries to prevent brain drain and brain waste.
Recommendations
To achieve a balanced distribution of health care workers globally, it is important to have a global partnership that will address the shortage of health workers by drawing and mobilizing key stakeholders to assist developing nations to have a better plan. The plan should enhance an opportunity for education and employment of health practitioners. In addition developing countries should improve working conditions for health workers by boosting their income and creating opportunities for them to advance through offering training. In addition, it is important to improve financial assistance to enable developing nations to drugs and medical equipments readily available. The programs should include funds and other incentives that can easily boost recruitment and expand locally available training programs and facilities. Such programs can make health care workers to move back to their home countries.

References
Alkire, S. & Lincoln, C. (2004). “Medical Expectations in International Migration: Should Doctors and Nurses Be Treated Differently.” Paper presented at Global Migration Regimes Workshop. Stockholm, Sweden.
Bach, S. (2003). International Migration of Health Workers: Labour and Social Issues. International Labour Office, Geneva.
Buchan, J. T. Park and Sochaiski, J. (2003). “International Nurse Mobility: Trends and Policy Implications.” World Health Organization, Geneva.
Dovlo, D. and Tim, M. (2004). “A Review of the Migration of Africa’s Health Professionals.” Paper Commissioned by the Joint Leaning Initiative on Human Resources for Health, Africa Working Group.
Global Health Workforce, (2011). Increasing access to health workers in remote and rural areas through improved retention. Retrieved on 12th October 2011 from: http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/health-systems/geneva-health-forum/the-global-health-workforce
Global Health Workforce Alliance, (2011).Investing in health personnel treating mental health conditions, World Health Organization. Retrieved on 12th October 2011 from: http://www.who.int/workforcealliance/en/
Global Health Blog, (2010). Top 10 Myths about the Global Health Workforce Crisis Busted at the National Physicians Alliance Conference. Retrieved on 12th October 2011 from: http://www.intrahealth.org/page/top-10-myths-about-the-global-health-workforce-crisis-busted-at-the-national-physicians-alliance-conference.