Responding to the State of the World’s Nursing 2020 report in Aotearoa New Zealand: Aligning our nursing workforce to universal health coverage and health equity

Abstract

The World Health Organization's State of the World's Nursing (SoWN) 2020 report identified that the international maldistribution of the nursing workforce, particularly in high-income and developed countries, greatly impeded the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals and the World Health Organization priority of universal health coverage. Policy advice in the SoWN report emphasises investment in growing the nursing workforce to not only address a calculated shortfall of 5.9 million nurses internationally, but to augment domestic production of nurses in countries who are over-reliant on nurses trained overseas. Aotearoa New Zealand is one such country that is heavily reliant on internationally qualified nurses, with 27% of its total nursing workforce being migrants. Key prescriptions from the report include investment in nursing workforce data and its management; nursing leadership; nursing education; and the regulation of nurses. The report provides timely advice on the deep over-reliance on migrant nurses particularly in the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic, economic recession, and ballooning