Background

Few members of the current health and care workforce had lived through a pandemic. Therefore learning from international experience became an essential part of the response to COVID-19.

Aims and objectives

This paper considered the following two topics:

How the health and care workforce and health and social care system learn from international experience of COVID-19:

• official information, specifically the websites of the World Health Organization (WHO), professional organisations and government bodies (from both the UK and other countries);
• research evidence emerging from outside the UK, published in journals and websites;
• clinical and care networks;
• social media, particularly Twitter;
• general news sources.

What we know about key lessons from international experience:

• sources of key lessons for the care system are the WHO and government guidance;
• the care workforce is learning from international experience in patient management.

Resources and further information

• Briefing paper: Covid-19 – Learning from international experience (PDF).

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