Health workforce planning: which countries include nurse practitioners and physician assistants and to what effect?

Background: An increasing number of countries are introducing new health professions, such as Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician Assistants (PAs). There is however limited evidence, on whether these new professions are included in countries' workforce planning.

Methods: A cross-country comparison of workforce planning methods.

Is there enough research output of EU projects available to assess and improve health system performance? An attempt to understand and categorise the output of EU projects conducted between 2002 and 2012.

Background: Adequate performance assessment benefits from the use of disaggregated data to allow a proper evaluation of health systems. Since routinely collected data are usually not disaggregated enough to allow stratified analyses of healthcare needs, utilisation, cost and quality across different sectors, international research projects could fill this gap by exploring means to data collection or even providing individual-level data. The aim of this paper is therefore to (1) study the availability and accessibility of relevant European-funded health projects, and (2) to analyse their contents and methodologies.

Reconfiguring health workforce: a case-based comparative study explaining the increasingly diverse professional roles in Europe.

Background: Over the past decade the healthcare workforce has diversified in several directions with formalised roles for health care assistants, specialised roles for nurses and technicians, advanced roles for physician associates and nurse practitioners and new professions for new services, such as case managers. Hence the composition of health care teams has become increasingly diverse. The exact extent of this diversity is unknown across the different countries of Europe, as are the drivers of this change.

[Nursing tasks left undone in German acute care hospitals - results from the international study RN4Cast].

Background: Implicit rationing of nursing care - likewise as in medical care - has never been empirically measured in German hospitals. Thus, little is known about prevalence and patterns of nursing care left undone as well as its association with nurse work environment and staffing.

Methodology: We surveyed 1,511 registered nurses from 49 German acute hospitals participating in the multi-country cross-sectional study RN4CAST.

Prevalence, patterns and predictors of nursing care left undone in European hospitals: results from the multicountry cross-sectional RN4CAST study.

Background: Little is known of the extent to which nursing-care tasks are left undone as an international phenomenon.

Aim: The aim of this study is to describe the prevalence and patterns of nursing care left undone across European hospitals and explore its associations with nurse-related organisational factors.

Methods: Data were collected from 33 659 nurses in 488 hospitals across 12 European countries for a large multicountry cross-sectional study.

Nurse migration in Europe--can expectations really be met? Combining qualitative and quantitative data from Germany and eight of its destination and source countries.

Background: While nurse migration has received considerable political attention since the EU enlargements in 2004 and 2007, most research concentrated on the specific migration motives and the impact on health care systems, while little research focused on the experiences of nurses abroad or combined these experiences with research on working conditions in hospitals.

Objectives: To test whether the combination of qualitative and quantitative data on motives to migrate and to leave the current hospital, respectively, provides sufficient information (1) to analyse working conditions in Germany compared to five destination and three source countries, (2) to verify or falsify the assumption that working conditions in destination countries are better than in source countries, and (3) to identify sound strategies for workforce planning.

Design And Data Sources: (a) Relevant push factors for migrating from Germany were identified via an online survey, focus groups, and telephone interviews.

Nurses' intention to leave their profession: a cross sectional observational study in 10 European countries.

Background: As the European population ages, the demand for nursing care increases. Yet, a shortage of nurses at the labour market exists or is predicted for most European countries. There are no adequate solutions for this shortage yet, and recruitment of future nurses is difficult.

The introduction of DRG funding and hospital nurses' changing perceptions of their practice environment, quality of care and satisfaction: comparison of cross-sectional surveys over a 10-year period.

Background: As other countries which have introduced diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) to pay their hospitals Germany initially expected that quality of care could deteriorate. Less discussed were potential implications for nurses, who might feel the efficiency-increasing effects of DRGs on their daily work, which in turn may lead to an actual worsening of care quality.

Objective: To analyze whether the DRG implementation in German acute hospitals (as well as other changes over the 10-year period) had measurable effects on (1) the nurse work environment (including e.