A competent health workforce is a vital resource for health services delivery, dictating the
extent to which services are capable of responding to health needs. In the context of the
changing health landscape, an integrated approach to service provision has taken precedence.
For this, strengthening health workforce competencies is an imperative, and doing
so in practice hinges on the oversight and steering function of governance. To aid health system
stewards in their governing role,this review seeks to provide an overview of processes,
tools and actors for strengthening health workforce competencies. It draws from a purposive
and multidisciplinary review of literature, expert opinion and country initiatives across
the WHO European Region’s 53 Member States. Through our analysis, we observe distinct
yet complementary roles can be differentiated between health services delivery and the
health system. This understanding is a necessary prerequisite to gain deeper insight into
the specificities for strengthening health workforce competencies in order for governance
to rightly create the institutional environment called for to foster alignment. Differentiating
between the contribution of health services and the health system in the strengthening
of health workforce competencies is an important distinction for achieving and sustaining
health improvement goals.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. This is an open access article under
the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)