Call for proposals to provide training for health workforce, including digital skills

Background and policy context

The COVID-19 pandemic showed the enormous scope for mutual learning and the importance of sharing knowledge or updating skills to save lives and achieve better health outcomes. The right skills are also essential to mobilise resources in crisis situations. In addition, the access to continuous professional training is one of the most important motivation factors for the health workforce, and equips them with necessary skills to save lives and improve health outcomes.

The European Health Union package puts particular emphasis on improving the resilience of health systems and staff is at the very core of more resilient health systems. On top of a challenge related to staff shortages, the health systems in the Union should also address skills mismatches. This has already been highlighted in the 2017, 2019 and 2021 State of Health in the EU Companion Reports, which show that training is key in not only upgrading skills of health workforce, but also in supporting quicker transition to more effective and patient-oriented health models.

This action will address shortages in access to continuous and professional development and training for health professionals (CPD) and it will increase opportunities for training for non-clinical staff working on health planning, procurement and management. This will contribute to the transformation of health systems including digital health solutions.

Improving digital skills is a precondition of a quicker digital transition, one of the priorities for the Commission. Often digital skills are outdated and not adequately considered in professional development, therefore the design of training courses and promoting the results will raise awareness for the need for digital skills, quality of the available training, and the importance of digital skills within the healthcare professions.

Mobilising efforts to address skills mismatches is, among other actions an objective of the EU Pact for Skills, which calls for efforts in all the sectors, including health, to support skills necessary to recover quicker from the COVID-19 pandemic and to build more resilient societies and economies. A health partnerships under the EU Pact for Skills will promote digital skills, so this action will directly contribute to it.

The training courses will also pay due attention to the digital dimension and will strengthen the digital literacy and use of digital health tools by the health workforce. Investing in digital skills of health workforce enables the safe and effective use of approved latest digital technologies developments, as the recent OECD analysis highlights.

To address existing skills mismatches, the actions can target upskilling and re-skilling to deal with pressing health challenges such as antimicrobial resistance, emerging infectious diseases, multi-morbidity and chronic diseases and other potential new challenges in the future, depending on the needs of Member States.

This action is closely linked to EU political priorities such as the European Health Union and the EU Pact for Skills. In the implementation, this action will ensure that there is no overlap with projects financed by the NextGenerationEU funds.

This action implements the EU4Health Programme’s general objective of ‘strengthening health systems’ (Article 3, point (d)) through the specific objectives defined in Article 4 points (b), (h) and (i), of Regulation (EU) 2021/522.

Objectives pursued

The objective of this action is to strengthen the continuous professional development and training through updated or new training courses developed in co-operation with professional associations, education centres and other relevant organisations. This will provide opportunities for up-skilling or re-skilling, taking full advantage of technological developments in line with the EU Pact for Skills (e.g. training will include relevant modules on digital skills).

Description of the activities to be funded under this topic

This action will cover the following activities:

1. developing and implementing training modules of continuous professional development for medical professions including nurses and other health workforce by addressing their needs;
2. the training courses will include digital skills and other relevant skills needed for surge capacity in crises and for transformation of health systems into new care models providing more integrated health care;
3. developing and implementing training modules for non-clinical staff working in health systems to contribute to effective, accessible and resilient health systems with a focus on digital skills for procurement, planning and management;
4. micro credentials in the training courses (in line with the forthcoming Commission’s initiative on micro credentials) could be considered.

This action will complement the activities under the healthcare workforce projects cluster supported under the 3^rd Health Programme and the joint action (‘A health workforce to meet health challenges - forecasting and planning for workforce in the healthcare sector’) established under the 2021 EU4Health work programme on building capacity in effective forecasting and planning for health workforce.

Expected results and impact

The expected results are the following:

1. newly designed European training modules for health workforce (physically or online) and their implementation; at least 1 module for general medicine, at least 3 modules for specialists professionals, at least 4 modules for nurses, at least 2 modules for non-clinical staff working in health systems or health authorities;
2. at least seven specific modules to train trainers;
3. improving the digital skills of health workforce as part of patient care;
4. developing micro-credentials as appropriate in skills for healthcare;
5. refining the current educational model to adapt the health workforce skills for surge demand in crisis.

This action will impact on the skills underpinning quicker recovery and transition to more resilient health systems. It will also have an impact on:

1. organisational change, improvement of workload and team work, especially in surge capacity;

the implementation of the Pact for Skills initiative through provision of training opportunities to upskill and reskill especially in digital skills in healthcare.

Specific mandatory deliverables and/or milestones

Project proposals should include the assessment of needs and the description of the intervention logic, showing how the proposed training courses and modules will contribute to closing the existing and future gaps in skills (both in relation to upskilling and reskilling of health workforce).

Each project proposal should include:

1) the assessment of needs with following elements:

• The analysis of training needs per country and per sector which should distinguish between needs for more basic and/or advanced skills and take into account existing analyses and views of national professional societies and national health authorities;
• The analysis of the most essential needs of target groups to reach by age, gender, specific category of health workforce (clinical and non clinical staff);
• The analysis of the most essential needs according to thematic focus on training demonstrating how selected topics and themes of training will help to address existing and future skills gaps, policy priorities and needs for professional reorientation of staff linked to taking up new functions, changes of functions and ways of working or reorganisation of health systems;
• A mapping of existing continuous training and professional development training possibilities in Member States targeting health professionals (doctors, nurses and other health professionals) and non-clinical staff and explanation how a project proposal addresses existing training gaps.

2) training components with following elements:

• when relevant, training progamme/s for ‘Train the trainer’ modules with clear training targets aligned to the needs analysis;
• the most relevant elements needed for developing the training addressing the needs of specific categories of health workforce;
• training programmes developed on the basis of the professional expertise with clear training targets aligned to the needs analysis;
• training should target specialisations recognised in at least 10 Member States;
• training should combine theoretical and practical training modules;
• training should be carried out in at least 5 Member States and should be provided in national languages of these countries;
• each training should include components on digital skills;
• training plan explaining how training will be organised: selection of participants, selection criteria, duration, forms of training (per hours/per week), selection of trainers, etc;
• communication and dissemination plan of these training activities, including by using a userfriendly platform;
• overall evaluation plan ;
• if relevant, possibility of microcredentials to be provided to each trainee attending the training courses and addressing the specific skills developed during the training (physically or online) or a certificate of training (also provided online);
• high quality supporting training materials prepared by the trainer.
• training programmes and materials should be available on line for future potential use and dissemination in countries not participating in the projects.

3) Mechanisms of co-operation of European professional associations with national associations and national health authorities.

4) Monitoring mechanisms ensuring structured and regular reporting on results and impacts of projects.

5) Project proposals should, if relevant, demonstrate complementarities with:

• Reforms and investments included in Resilience and Recovery Plans,
• The Flagship initiative Digital Skills for Digital Transformation of Health and Care Systems financed by the Technical Support Instrument (TSI);
• Initiatives supported under the Horizon Europe programme, Healthy citizens 2.0: supporting digital empowerment and health literacy of citizens,;
• Digital education programmes supported under the Digital Europe Programme,
• Training initiatives co-funded by the European Cohesion Funds.
• Other relevant training initiatives.

Specific action-level indicators for reporting purposes

Applicants shall collect data on the following specific action-level indicators in their regular reporting activities in case of award:

• Number of trainers receiving specific training.
• Number of persons who completed the training with a breakdown for each specific target group (General practitioners and specialist doctors, nurses, long-term care personnel, non-clinical staff) and for each country. Number of persons who completed the training by age, gender, specific category of health workforce (clinical and non clinical staff);
• Number of persons who completed digital skills courses.
• Number of persons who completed training on specific themes (themes defined in training programmes).
• Number of participants of training, who obtained continuous Medical Education credits ( if applicable according to national frameworks).
• Number of certificates of training obtained by participants issued according to developed microcredentials.
• Satisfaction rate of participants of the training.

The applicants are required to include in their proposals additional specific action-level indicators which will be agreed with the Commission during the grant agreement preparation.

The Commission may require the awardees to collect data for additional specific action-level indicators, where needed to complement the above indicators.