Together, we can imagine and create better healthcare for all.

The landscape of health education is at a critical juncture. The profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a significant exodus of healthcare professionals, prompting the International Council of Nurses to declare a global health emergency due to a shortage of nurses[1]. In Ireland, despite efforts to expand our healthcare workforce, the Health Service Executive (HSE) is facing a potential shortfall of up to 15,000 staff in acute hospitals[2], and approximately 2,000 General Practitioners (GPs) over the next decade[3].

Amidst these challenges, we are in a transformative era marked by technological and scientific advances and a shift towards a patient-centered healthcare approach. At the heart of this transformation lies Sláintecare, Ireland’s national healthcare initiative, propelling us toward a de-centralised, community-based model of care.

This presents an opportunity with the potential to positively impact patient care. To seize this moment, we must prioritize structural change, expansion, and innovation in health education, while also delivering on funding commitments to universities. As centres of knowledge and innovation, universities play a crucial role in reinvigorating and sustaining our healthcare workforce, ensuring its resilience, and guiding us towards a responsive healthcare future.

Maynooth’s Commitment: A New School of Health and Medicine

Maynooth University recently launched our Strategic Plan for 2023-2028, outlining our purpose: “to imagine and create better futures for all.” This has led us to set an ambitious goal of establishing a new School of Health and Medicine, dedicated to advancing health education for the betterment of our society 

Collaboration is at the core of our purpose. Through my leadership experience in health education globally, I’ve witnessed the power of effective partnerships between academia and healthcare systems. I have led collaborations to deliver innovation by integrating interprofessional learning into curricula and enabling access for underrepresented groups to healthcare professions. Universities are uniquely positioned to collaborate with health sectors and professional bodies to imagine and create the future of health education and patient care. This tri-partite relationship is key to innovation and success.

As universities, our responsibility is to prepare healthcare professionals effectively for the rapidly evolving reality, ensuring broader access to healthcare professions and fostering future-focused approaches to health education. Our research and global collaborations across diverse areas, from immunology, anti-microbial resistance, obesity and chronic diseases to global health, business, data governance, and digital transformation, consistently inform our teaching and healthcare practices, keeping us at the forefront of innovative health education.

Irish universities collectively lead in health education, leveraging our distinctive strengths in teaching, research, and practice. The innovative national Master's in Digital Health Transformation, co-designed and co-delivered across Ireland’s eight research universities, exemplifies the kind of collaboration that is possible to address evolving healthcare needs, including specific future-focused trends such as AI, eHealth, and personalised medicine.

As a newcomer, Maynooth has a unique opportunity to contribute by innovating alongside established health education providers, learning from others, and creating new pathways for Ireland’s changing demographic and healthcare needs.

Addressing Workforce Needs: Varied Pathways and Equal Access

To meet imminent workforce needs and address shortages, the higher education sector is actively exploring varied pathways to expedite and broaden access to health professions, with a focus on nurturing a domestically trained workforce. In addition to examining successful models from other countries, including employer-funded, practice-based pathways to healthcare professions, we’re looking at graduate entry and conversion programmes. These can offer motivated students shorter training times, with a focus on critical areas of healthcare needs.

Ensuring equal access to health professions is a priority. Maynooth’s upcoming nursing programme will allocate 50% of places to students from Further Education and Training institutions. Competence as a healthcare professional is not solely about scores but encompasses a wide range of personal skills and attributes that health education needs to recognise and build upon.

Addressing historical placement challenges, we advocate for an accelerated transition towards community-based and longitudinal experiences, aligning with Sláintecare’s principles. Enriching student learning through technology, including simulated learning and AI in clinical scenarios, will expose students effectively to diverse healthcare contexts. Recognising the need for flexibility in teaching, we suggest placement schedules to strategically target gaps in the hospital system. Additionally, exploring shorter ‘block model’ based learning can optimise the academic year.

The Lifelong Learning Imperative

Highlighting the importance of lifelong learning, delivered both in person and online, is paramount. It plays a crucial role in addressing the complexity of retaining and attracting health professionals and encouraging them to contribute to Ireland’s healthcare system in the long term. Lifelong learning ensures that healthcare professionals stay ahead of emerging trends, fostering a resilient and forward-looking workforce. Sustainable workforce planning is closely tied to this and requires collaborative efforts. We welcome plans for comprehensive planning structures across government and are keen to engage to ensure a unified and responsive approach.

The transition to a genuinely distributed healthcare system, supported by responsive health education that engages with current and future challenges, demands collective engagement. Maynooth University is eager to collaborate with universities, providers, regulators, government, and support agencies, to listen, learn, and pilot innovative models of health education, and contribute to this transformative journey.

Let us share our collective progress, engage in discussions on health education and innovation, and explore opportunities for meaningful collaboration.

Together, we can imagine and create better healthcare for all.

• Professor Eeva Leinonen, President of Maynooth University

[1] https://www.icn.ch/news/icn-report-says-shortage-nurses-global-health-emergency

[2] https://www.esri.ie/news/public-acute-hospital-workforce-requirements-set-to-increase-across-all-geographic-regions-as 

[3] PRESS RELEASE ICGP calls for urgent measures to address GP shortages - ICGP News