Health Workforce Department, World Health Organization, Avenue Appia 20, 1202Geneva, Switzerland.
Department of UHC/Health Systems, World Health Organization Regional Office for South-East Asia, New Delhi, India.
Bull World Health Organ. 2023 Sep 1;101(9):595-604. doi: 10.2471/BLT.21.287728. Epub 2023 Jun 29.
The role of health practitioner regulation in ensuring patient safety is well recognized. Less recognized is the role of regulation in addressing broader health system priorities. These goals include managing the costs, capacities and distribution of health professional education institutions; ensuring the competence and equitable distribution of health workers; informing workforce planning and mobilization; enabling the use of digital technologies; and addressing challenges related to the international mobility of health workers. Even where health practitioner regulation is designed to advance these goals, important gaps exist between the potential of regulatory systems and their performance. The response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led many countries to introduce regulatory changes to allow more flexibility and innovations in the mobilization of health practitioners. Building on this experience, we need to critically re-examine health practitioner regulatory systems to ensure that these systems support rather than impede progress towards national health goals. We discuss the role of health practitioner regulation in contemporary health systems, highlighting recent regulatory reforms in selected countries, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify the importance of dynamic, effective and flexible health practitioner regulatory systems in progress towards universal health coverage and health security.
卫生从业者监管在确保患者安全方面的作用得到了广泛认可。但较少被认识到的是，监管在解决更广泛的卫生系统优先事项方面所发挥的作用。这些目标包括管理卫生专业教育机构的成本、能力和分布；确保卫生工作者的能力和公平分布；为劳动力规划和动员提供信息；使能数字技术的使用；以及应对与卫生工作者国际流动相关的挑战。即使卫生从业者监管旨在推进这些目标，监管系统的潜力与其绩效之间仍存在重大差距。应对 2019 冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行促使许多国家引入监管改革，以在卫生从业者的动员方面提供更大的灵活性和创新。在此基础上，我们需要批判性地重新审视卫生从业者监管系统，以确保这些系统支持而非阻碍国家卫生目标的实现。我们讨论了卫生从业者监管在当代卫生系统中的作用，强调了包括 COVID-19 大流行期间选定国家最近的监管改革。我们确定了动态、有效和灵活的卫生从业者监管系统在实现全民健康覆盖和卫生安全方面的重要性。
