Healthcare worker (HCW) mental well-being has become a global public health priority as health systems seek to strengthen their resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysing data from the Health System Response Monitor, we present six case studies (Denmark, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Romania, and the United Kingdom) as a comparative review of policy interventions supporting HCW mental health during the pandemic. The results illustrate a wide range of interventions. While Denmark and the United Kingdom built on pre-existing structures to support HCW mental wellbeing during the pandemic, the other countries required new interventions. Across all cases, there was a reliance on self-care resources, online training tools, and remote professional support.

The 2020–2022 period of the global COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fact that many countries health systems had inadequate health workforce availability. This is despite sustainable health workforces being critical to health service and healthcare delivery, an acknowledgement that drove the significant investment and focus on health workforce development over the previous two decades. As such, this review article discusses health workforce governance and planning, notes its weaknesses, and identifies some of the barriers to the implementation of health workforce policy making and planning and the achievement of sustainable health workforces. Important is the recognition that health workforce planning is long-term in nature, while health workforce decision-making processes are dominated by political processes that have much shorter time frames. The article concludes by offering the approach of backcasting to overcome this dichotomy.

Background: Nurses have the potential to make a real impact on the health and well-being of people and populations and contribute to the realisation of delivery of Universal Health Coverage. However, in many parts of the world, the education and practice of nursing and nurses’ position in health care and society are restricted by a range of social, cultural, economic and political factors. In North Macedonia, the Ministry of Health in partnership with the WHO Country Office launched a primary healthcare strategy supporting the development of nurses in primary care to fulfil their full scope of service. Aims: To present information on the education, practice and position of nursing, in particular primary care nursing, in North Macedonia and to describe the ongoing initiatives to support the further development of nursing. Approach: Background documents reviewed, and visits to healthcare settings, organisations, interviews with individuals and groups and workshops undertaken in 2019–2020. Findings: Three key areas of development were identified: education of nurses, their service delivery and practice in primary care, and their position in health care and society, all underpinned by the need for workforce planning. The findings formed the basis of a 10-year plan: Making Change Happen: The Nursing and Midwifery Development Roadmap. Developments: To support the proposed primary care pilots, during the 2020/2021 COVID-19 pandemic, an on-line modular programme for primary care nurses was developed and delivered with the support of members drawn from The National Working Group for Moving Primary Care Nursing Forward in North Macedonia. Further work is planned to develop initial nurse education and to pilot changes in primary care. Conclusions: The launch of the primary healthcare strategy stimulated initiatives to improve the education, position and practice of primary care nursing. The COVID-19 pandemic required flexibility and changes to the original plans.