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Introduction to health professional mobility in a changing Europe 11
volume is to contribute to a better understanding of current policy practice and
priorities.
1.5 Methodology
This volume takes a more in-depth look at current health workforce data
and its utility for assessing health professional mobility, the experiences of
mobile health professionals, management responses to health worker retention
and current experience with policy instruments to track and manage health
professional mobility. A range of methodologies are employed in the volume:
• the scoping review on the conceptual underpinnings of health professional
mobility;
• a critical analysis of health workforce data, indicators and register
methodologies;
• a literature review of the impact of the global financial crisis on health
professional mobility;
• quantitative and qualitative methodologies on the experiences and
motivations of the mobile health professional;
• expert interviews to capture the perspective of health care managers; and
• literature analysis and expert interviews on the impact of policy instruments.
These methodologies are explained in more detail in the individual chapters.
1.6 Limitations
The limitations of available data on health professional mobility constitute a
constraint for effective policy and planning (Wismar et al., 2011). Data sets in
different countries are often incomplete or out of date, and the data sets are not
always compatible across national boundaries. This continues to be a limiting
factor, despite recent and ongoing efforts by WHO, OECD, International
Labour Organization and Eurostat at harmonizing data collection and analysis.
In particular, it can be difficult to develop an up-to-the-minute assessment of the
dynamics of changing patterns of mobility when data aggregation, verification
and publication are often significantly “behind the curve” of change (Buchan,
O’May & Dussault, 2013). This places some limitations on detailed analysis
and interpretation, which are compounded by the additional time required to
edit, quality assure and publish conclusions in a volume. Nevertheless, there
remains an opportunity to make more effective use of the data sets that do exist
and to harness them more effectively to support policy-making.