Global Certification: A Transformative Approach to Building the World’s Rehabilitation Health Workforce

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.