COVID-19: International learning

Few members of the current health and care workforce have lived through a pandemic. Learning from international experience has become an essential part of the response to COVID-19.

Established ways of sharing health and care information cannot keep pace with rapid changes in knowledge. Our paper considers 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.

Associated publication

• Full briefing paper – COVID-19: Learning from international experience (PDF)