Health systems across Europe are facing growing pressures from nurse shortages, rising care demands, and increasing burnout. In response, WHO/Europe has issued the Region’s first policy brief on safe nurse staffing, defining it as having the right number and mix of appropriately educated and supported nurses to deliver safe care. Evidence shows that insufficient staffing and inadequate skills increase risks for patients while contributing to stress, injury, and mental ill-health among nurses.
In 2022, WHO/Europe warned that shortages in the healthcare workforce were a “ticking timebomb,” with projections indicating nearly one million health worker deficits by 2030. Several EU Member States have reported that deteriorating working conditions and mounting mental health pressures are accelerating nurse burnout and attrition, directly affecting patient safety. WHO Regional Director for Europe Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge emphasized that nurses, who comprise 56% of the health workforce and are predominantly women, are critical to safe healthcare and that investments in staffing are essential for both patient safety and system stability.
European Commission Director-General for Health and Food Safety, Dr Sandra Gallina, noted that nurses face heavy workloads and declining interest in the profession. She highlighted that initiatives such as EU4Health’s Nursing Action, Joint Action HEROES, training projects, and other funding instruments like Erasmus+ and the Recovery and Resilience Facility support Member States in addressing workforce shortages and mental health challenges.
The WHO/Europe brief provides policymakers with a framework to prioritize safe nurse staffing, drawing on global evidence and examples from the EU-funded Nursing Action project across 21 countries. Investments in staffing have demonstrated measurable benefits, including reduced patient mortality, improved care quality, enhanced workforce well-being, and better overall health system performance.
The brief emphasizes that safe nurse staffing requires both strategic and operational measures. Strategic measures involve long-term decisions on training, funding, distribution, and workforce sustainability, while operational measures ensure that the right nurses are in the right place each day, responding effectively to patient needs. Both levels are mutually reinforcing and essential for safe, sustainable staffing.
The brief identifies eight priority policy actions to guide Member States. These include treating nursing as safety-critical, managing system complexity, fostering long-term collaboration among stakeholders, using reliable data systems, strengthening monitoring and accountability, investing wisely, ensuring high-quality education and professional development, and empowering nurse leadership to translate evidence into context-specific staffing decisions.
The policy brief is part of the Nursing Action project, a three-year initiative launched in 2024 by WHO/Europe and funded by the European Commission under the EU4Health programme. The project supports the development and implementation of evidence-based strategies to recruit and retain nurses, improve working conditions, and strengthen the nursing workforce across the European Region.
