PSI Champions Health Workers' Rights at WHO-NHS Event
At a recent WHO-NHS England workshop, PSI brought the voice of our 15 million health sector members to the debate, raising examples of how social dialogue improves outcomes for health staff and patients.
The Workshop, which brought together over 300 health workforce professionals and leaders, focused on improving health workforce governance, through better staffing, skills, transforming leadership, and reshaping roles to ensure that quality health services are accessible, equitable, efficient, affordable and available for all.
Huma Haq PSI Care Officer
"Our members want us fighting for safe staffing levels and more public funding to ensure patient safety and better health for all."
PSI is the largest global union federation representing health and care workers globally. Care Officer Huma Haq outlined how our members lead campaigns for safe staffing levels and workforce strategies that prioritise workers and ensure patient safety. She said "Healthworkers' Unions must be involved in shaping the workforce policies which affect frontline working conditions." Our recent survey of thousands of health staff globally, cited by the WHO, found more than a third have seen patients die as a result of understaffing.
Such advocacy comes at a crucial time. Globally, health and care systems are at breaking point due to underfunding and staff shortages and struggling to meet people’s needs. This places stress on existing staff, undermines the quality of care and creates pressures to cut working conditions, trade union rights and privatise services. Our members say these conditions are pushing many health workers to breaking point while creating dangerous incentives to cut corners on working conditions and privatize services.
Unions are fighting back by:
Demanding safe staffing levels be enshrined in law and policy
Protecting collective bargaining rights as essential for workforce planning
Opposing privatization that puts profits before patient care
Advocating for increased public investment in health worker training and retention
Through engagement with WHO and national health authorities, we are advancing a worker-centered approach to health workforce governance focused on:
Strategic workforce planning backed by proper public investment
Enhanced accountability in health policy decision-making
Quality of care standards that protect both workers and patients
This advocacy work builds on our longstanding commitment to quality public healthcare and decent work for health and care workers worldwide.