Health minister Paulette Lenert (LSAP) outlined the latest measures while responding to a parliamentary question about how Luxembourg was filling the staffing gap.

According to figures from a 2019 report on the state of the medical and health professionals in Luxembourg, 64.7% of nurses working in the healthcare sector in Luxembourg were living abroad. Of that group, half were working in hospitals.

“It would therefore be illusory to think that our hospitals could only operate with staff who would also live here in Luxembourg, even if in any case every effort must be made in the coming years to make the profession of nurse as attractive as possible so that our Luxembourg students choose the profession,” Lenert wrote.

Reliance on cross-border staffing

The pandemic has revealed an acute shortage of trained health staff across Europe and exposed Luxembourg's reliance on talent abroad. In an interview in November, emergency care coordinator of the Robert Schuman hospitals Dr Emile Bock said that regions "including Luxembourg, are now paying for years of fiscal restraint and non-formal training in these challenging, undervalued careers that are no longer chosen by young people."

In recent months, private testing laboratories also struggled to recruit sufficient testing staff to handle the covid-19 tests.

Following an interview with the Luxembourg nursing association on 27 November, Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel (DP) announced a training reform and image boost with the general public. At the time, Bettel said: "It is also important to train more nurses in this country, and to ensure that the training meets the needs and challenges of your profession. Our common goal is to prepare your profession for the future and thus support and strengthen the entire health care system over the long term."