Codes of Practice and Bilateral Recruitment Agreements as Mechanisms to
Balance Patients' Rights vs. Health Professionals' Rights
Evgeniya Plotnikova
PhD student, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh
International recruitment of health professionals has become one of the key
strategies of mainly developed countries to respond to global shortages in health sector.
This policy, initially taken as temporary solution, now causes long-term negative
effects for the stakeholders in both “source” and “destination” countries.
As a result, insecurity for migrant health professionals and patients destroys the
consensus within the body of human rights, sharpening both the controversy between
patients’ rights to health and the professionals’ rights to freedom of movement and
career choice. It also provokes debates on efficient methods of regulation and
management of health service provision especially in relation to shortages of health
workers.
The proposed paper intends to analyse unilateral agreements (codes of practice)
and bilateral recruitment agreements (government-to-government cooperation) as policy
instruments elaborated by international organisations (ILO, WHO and IOM) and
national states within the framework of ‘ethical recruitment’. The paper is primarily
focused on the UK experience in ethical recruitment and will investigate the
opportunities and limitations of the codes of practice and government-to-government
agreements regarding their potential in balancing patients’ rights vs. health professionals’
rights.
The impact on the target stakeholders – patients, health professionals and NationStates – measures the regulatory and protective power of these instruments. The key
questions of analysis are: How does the policy of ethical recruitment protect/’threaten’
these groups? Whether new policy introduces protective or restrictive implications?
Nation-States’ benefits from ethical recruitment policy represents particular interest for
analysis regarding the changing architecture of global health governance.