Information at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), made presentations about health care workforce data and infrastructure around health care workforce modeling and planning in Canada. Dr. Bourgeault highlighted the need to take an evidence-informed approach to oral health workforce planning assessing needs and capacity across a range of workers. During the planning process, there are many people from various sectors, including practicing oral health professionals and those involved with education and training, that should be involved, and so Dr. Bourgeault reiterated how workforce planning needs to be a collaborative and transparent process—there should be many inputs from within the community. She also pointed out the need to develop scenarios with the best evidence at hand and showed how those scenarios are guided using a six-step framework. These include projecting the changing numbers of workers, enabling workers to perform at their full scope, and have systems of support to address gaps or shortages in the oral health workforce. Dr. Bourgeault also emphasized the impact of mental health among the oral health workforce and how it can impact men and women differently. Both of these factors would need to be considered in evidence-informed oral health workforce planning. Ms. Damiano provided an overview of CIHI’s current data and products related to the health workforce as well as the institute’s plans to advance data and analytics in the space. She highlighted the need for workforce data and standards advancements, including filling key data gaps and exploring new sources of data (e.g. can payroll data support advancements about personal support worker supply). Further, she emphasized CIHI’s goal to support system priorities for planning, including information needs related to the oral health workforce. Ms. Damiano underscored the need to improve the timeliness of health workforce data Canadian HealthWorkforce Network Six-Step Framework for Health Workforce Planning (Simkin et al., 2024): 1) Understanding community characteristics including population need and demographic profiles 2) Understanding utilization 3) Understanding workforce capacity to meet needs and service requirements 4) Assessing alignment, which including asking if workforce capacity meets the needs of the population 5) Exploring the factors in play in any misalignment of capacity and need 6) Pull it all together into an action plan and information as well as the need to modernize health workforce data holdings, which may include leveraging AI and automation to ingest, transform and disseminate data. “The workshop was the first time in recent years that these four oral health occupations were able to come together to discuss workforce issues,” says Dr. Benoit Soucy, CDA’s chief knowledge officer. “Because of the interdependence of the oral health occupations, working together is essential. We discussed short-term actions, such as providing resources for everyone on the dental team to help build healthy work environments, and longer-term plans to make sure all oral health occupations have the education, organizational infrastructure and support they need to have long, healthy, and meaningful careers.” The workshop was the first time in recent years that these four oral health occupations have come together to discuss workforce issues. Because of the interdependence of the oral health occupations, working together is essential. 28 | 2024 | Issue 5
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTE5MTI=