This year’s high-caliber supporting programs have been seamlessly integrated with the exhibition. A special highlight involves the International Management Forum entitled “Mining the Potential in People’s Minds — Personnel Development Strategies and Innovations in European Elderly Care”.

The European Commission’s Green Paper on the European Workforce for Health has launched a discussion about the future of the health care workforce in Europe. The major topics here include the investment in training and continuing education as well as the development of solid personnel planning strategies to improve personnel deployment and retention.

The health care workforce in the EU is faced with serious challenges, and many of these problems are identical in all EU member states. The demographic slide towards an aging population is changing the pattern of illnesses and creating new challenges for health care employees. In addition, the phenomenon of population aging is occurring within the health care workforce itself, and there are no longer enough new recruits to replace workers who are retiring or leaving the EU. The migration and emigration of health care workers to and from the EU as will as inner-EU mobility itself are moreover having an impact on the supply and distribution of the workforce.

In the next few years there will be an EU-wide shortage of personnel in the health care professions, so that the mutual national recognition of professional qualifications, particularly in the field of elderly care services, must be facilitated and the necessary instruments put in place.

High-caliber speakers, including Olaf Christen from the AWO federal association, Lambert Smit from Drenthe College Assen in the Netherlands, Peggy Sass from AWO Schleswig-Holstein and Jan Wadsholt from Denmark, will sketch out personnel development strategies and recruitment techniques.

The first part of the forum is about personnel development concepts and methods in elderly care in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, with the goal of improved personnel retention.

Part 2 deals with European concepts and methods for recruiting new staff members in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark as well as strategies to cope with the growing shortage of workers in the care services sector.