The meeting focused in particular on:

1. establishing a trade union approach to the initiatives of the European Commission on a new EU Care Strategy and a potential EU framework for EU adequate working conditions for essential workers (which many health care professionals are) and to the recent European Parliament report on reducing inequalities in the health sector through the EU cohesion policy;
2. determining how to assist healthcare workforces to overcome digital skills gaps in their sector;
3. assessing the effects of the Covid pandemic on the health care workforce and finding ways for their improved support and appreciation by politics and society;

Participants made clear: The Covid crisis revealed the weaknesses in our health systems, most importantly the lack of sufficient care professionals per patient. As the pandemic situation fades out, our political actors seem to have forgotten the high price nurses and other health professional paid due to previous under-investments in the health sector. It is sad that even after such a ‘make-it or break it’ crisis still too often the hard work of nurses and other health professionals remains invisible and underappreciated.

Esther Reyes from the Spanish SATSE nurses union and President of CESI’s Expert Commission ‘Health Services’, said:

“Two years into the pandemic we notice that the healthcare workforce has been affected profoundly by high levels of anxiety and stress, burnout, violence and harassment, underpayment, no respect for rest days and poor work-life balance. We need to change this in order to save the health care workforce and to avoid losing nurses to other, more attractive professions. On the occasion of the 2022 International Day of Nurses, I plead we all take a stand and ask our stakeholders and politicians to stop the underappreciation of nurses. We need to invest better in the health workforce!”

CESI’s demands to this end include:

1. Nurses and doctors should always have a safe working environment.
2. A reasonable European patient-nurse quota should be established for everyone’s safety.
3. Equal work deserves equal pay and no kind of discrimination should occur when employing health care workers.
4. More investments in our health systems are needed in order to ensure that sufficient means and resources are made available for everyone’s care and well-being, without discrimination.
5. Access to social protection should be made available to all workers in the healthcare sector and the use of precarious temporary contracts be reduced in exchange for more stable and secure forms of employment.
6. Access to mental health remedies for all health workers suffering from the psychosocial effects of the pandemic should be made available.
7. Attracting new talent and skills in the health care sector should be pursued also via EU cohesion policy and not at the expense of the pool of specialists of third countries so that they will face great structural brain drains.
8. Real and meaningful access to interest representation should be made available for all the health workforce.
9. A full enforcement of the EU working time directive should be guaranteed to all the representatives of the nursing profession, not least also to ensure an adequate work-life balance for them.