Nurse Self Sufficiency/Sustainability in the Global Context

One major challenge for all countries is to establish workforce planning mechanisms that effectively meet the demands for health care and provide workforce stability. However, few nations have developed strategic plans for meeting nursing resource requirements that effectively address supply and demand. Instead, many developed countries choose to implement short term policy levers such as increased reliance on immigration, sometimes to the detriment of developing countries. This has prompted calls for developed countries to employ a model of so-called self sufficiency in addressing nursing and other health human resource shortages. The aim of this paper is to examine what definitions and models of self sufficiency exist in a nursing workforce context, and discuss their implications for policy. [from introduction]