Projections indicate a global workforce shortage of approximately 4.3 million across the health professions. The need to ensure an adequate supply of health workers worldwide has created a context for the increased global migration of these professionals. The global trend in the migration of health professionals has given rise to the international recruitment industry to facilitate the passage of health workers from source to destination countries. This is particularly the case in the United States, where the majority of immigrant health professionals have come by way of the recruiting industry. This industry is largely unregulated in the United States as well as in many other countries, for which voluntary codes have been used as a means to increase transparency of the recruitment process, shape professional conduct, and mitigate harm to foreign-educated health workers. The CGFNS Alliance case study presented herein describes a multi-stakeholder effort in the United States to promote ethical recruitment practices. Such codes not only complement the WHO Global Code of Practice but are necessary to maximize the impact of these global standards on local settings. This case study offers both a historical perspective and a conceptual framework for examining the multiplicity of factors affecting the migration of human resources for health. The lessons learned provide critical insights into the factors pertaining to the relevancy and effectiveness of the WHO Code from the perspectives of both source and destination countries. This study provides a conceptual model for examining the usefulness of the WHO Code as well as how best to ensure its viability, sustainability, relevancy, and effectiveness in the global environment. This case study concludes with recommendations for evolving business models that need to be in place to strengthen the effectiveness of the WHO Code in the marketplace and to ensure its impact on the international recruitment industry in advancing ethical practices. These recommendations include using effective screening mechanisms to determine health professionals’ readiness for migration as well as implementing certification processes to raise the practice standards for those directly involved in recruiting skilled workers and managing the migration flow.

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The 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, challenges the nursing profession to take a key role in redesigning the health care system. Intended to shape the future of nursing in the United States, the IOM report has implications for nursing worldwide. While individual states and nursing organizations are developing initiatives to implement the IOM recommendations in the United States, there must be a concomitant effort to examine the ripple effect on global health and the nursing community. This article addresses four IOM recommendations that are directly relevant to internationally educated nurses who practice across borders: nurse residency programs, lifelong learning, leading change to advance health, and interprofessional health care workforce data. The article discusses the IOM recommendations through a global perspective and offers policy implications for legislators, health care organizations and nurse educators, regulators and administrators.

To meet the needs of the 2.41 billion people seeking rehabilitation care, the world’s health workforce must be sustainable and scalable. In 2021, the WHO launched its Rehabilitation Competency Framework (RCF) to help countries build local rehabilitation ecosystems by focusing on high-level priorities. A top priority is the development of a health workforce that is sustainable and scalable to meet local needs. To capitalize on existing health workforce resources, countries need to focus on the specialists and on other members of the rehabilitation team who can assume targeted responsibilities for delivering care. To support these efforts, CGFNS International, Inc., an assessment organization for health professionals worldwide, is developing two exam-based global certifications, one for rehabilitation health workers and one for registered nurses working in rehabilitation settings. These global certifications assess the knowledge and competencies of individual rehabilitation health workers and nurses and certify those who meet the standards. For consumers, global certification attests to the competence of local service providers and helps ensure quality care. For health workers and nurses, global certification confers a credential that recognizes their expertise and supports their continuing professional development and career goals. And for policymakers, global certification provides useful information for managing care delivery. This article provides the rationale behind global certification, describes the methodology for creating these certifications, and shows how their underlying constructs and those of the WHO’s RCF align. This alignment helps consumers, health workers and nurses, and local authorities use all available tools to make informed decisions advancing rehabilitation care.