Abstract
BackgroundGlobal Engagement works with health partnerships to establish workforce and educational translation on a global scale to support the National Health Service (NHS). There is growing evidence on how international experiences (through volunteering, exchanges and placements) benefit the NHS through an innovative workforce that develops international best practice and promotes lifelong learning. Most of this evidence has been captured though surveys to returned international volunteers. However, there is limited evidence about how to quantify the value that returned international healthcare volunteers bring back to their country of residence.MethodsThis paper identifies the various benefits to the NHS from returned international healthcare volunteers. The outcomes from returned international volunteers, which have been identified as relevant form a NHS perspective, are linked to three key areas in a multisector analytical framework used by the World Bank to evaluate labour market programmes: (1) Investment climate and Infrastructure, (2) Labor market regulations and institutions, and (3) Education and skills development. The monetary value of these outcomes is quantified through productivity indices which capture the economic value that the achievement of these outcomes have on the quality of the NHS labor force. This model is applied to a dataset of international volunteers provided by the Global Engagement health partnerships.ResultsThe results suggest that international volunteering generates average productivity gains of up to 37% for doctors and up to 62% for nurses. Average productivity gains estimated from health partnerships data vary depending on duration of volunteering periods and occupational category mix.ConclusionsOur analysis offers a value for money rationale for international volunteering programmes purely from a domestic and NHS perspective. The valuation method considers only one of the aims of international volunteering programmes: the development of the existing and future NHS workforce. Broader benefits for health system strengthening at a global level are acknowledged but not accounted for. Overall, we conclude that if the acquisition of volunteering outcomes is realised, the NHS can accrue a productivity increase of between 24 and 41% per volunteer, with a value ranging from £13,215 to £25,934 per volunteer.
Highlights
Global Engagement works with health partnerships to establish workforce and educational translation on a global scale to support the National Health Service (NHS)
International volunteer outcomes include those in the domain “personal satisfaction and interests” which pertain to “social capital and health”. These are not mapped onto professional competencies [3]. The value of these outcomes is large according to the Well-being theory [17], we apply the concept of “ceiling of accountability” as termed in the Theory of Change to present the framework from the NHS perspective in the sense that we assume that these outcomes constitute systemic factors upon which there is little control, and we focus on what can be done according to outcomes in the I, L, and E domains
Comparisons across groups are presented in terms of the percentage point increase in “real” volume of NHS staff and of average monetary value of productivity gain per volunteer per year
Summary
Global Engagement works with health partnerships to establish workforce and educational translation on a global scale to support the National Health Service (NHS). There is growing evidence on how international experiences (through volunteering, exchanges and placements) benefit the NHS through an innovative workforce that develops international best practice and promotes lifelong learning. The Global Engagement (GE) is a Health Education England (HEE) programme working to establish workforce and educational translation on a global scale to support the National Health Service (NHS). This is being done through programmes focused on international recruitment, global placements, evaluation and research, international volunteering and health partnerships. The programmes are managed by health partnerships, defined by the Tropical Health Education Trust (THET) as “a model for improving health and health services based on ideas of co-development between actors and institutions from
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