University of Salford leads international efforts to develop healthcare workforce

Staff from the university are facilitating a number of global workshops throughout 2022 on behalf of Health Education England (HEE) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as part of the WHO Year of the Heath and Care worker programme. The workshops will be on the subject of healthcare workforce planning, and cover topics such as recovery from Covid-19, resilience to future disruption and how to grow the workforce.

Attendees will work through ‘action learning sets’, a way of getting a group of people together to focus on finding solutions to a specific problem.

The sessions aim to bring together future influencers and leaders from all areas of the social, economic, and political spheres.

Countries involved include Georgia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Malta, USA, and Ukraine.

Dr Naomi Sharples, Director of Workforce Development at the University of Salford, said: “It is fantastic to collaborate with HEE and the WHO to help tackle these global concerns. Attendees are encouraged to consider the challenges that face them – sometimes it can be the first opportunity that politicians and health leaders have had to come together for these discussions. 

“It is a huge privilege to share ideas on best practice and the journey we are on here in the UK, and gives us an invaluable opportunity to further build our confidence and understanding of global issues and systems.

“All our thoughts are with our colleagues who have been taking part from Ukraine, who are now facing such enormous and tragic disruption to their lives. We have offered them additional support and training from our specialists in wound care and are keeping in touch to help further where we can.”