Density of medical doctors (per 10,000 population) (2010-2018): 39.8
Density of nursing and midwifery personnel (per 10,000 population) (2010-2018): 57.4
Density of dentists (per 10,000 population) (2010-2019): 8.2
Density of pharmacists (per 10,000 population) (2010-2018): 10.9

Source: World health statistics 2020: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

Remuneration of Doctors, Ratio to Average Wage (2017)
General Practitioners: NA
Specialists: 2.5

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, Ratio to Average Wage (2017): 1.1
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, USD PPP (2017): $44,000

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

“While the total number of doctors per population in Italy is higher than the EU average (4.0 compared with 3.6 per 1 000 population in 2017), the number working in public hospitals and as general practitioners (GPs) is declining, and more than half of doctors are aged over 55, raising serious concerns about future shortages.

“Italy employs fewer nurses than nearly all western European countries (with the exception of Spain), and the number is substantially lower than the EU average (5.8 nurses per 1 000 population compared with 8.5 in the EU; Figure 8).”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Italy: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

“Concerns about the future availability of medical personnel are heightened by bottlenecks in the training and recruitment of new doctors needed to replace the large number of doctors who are soon to retire. These bottlenecks also result in large migration outflows of new medical graduates and young doctors starting their careers.

“Between 2010 and 2016, the number of medical graduates from Italian medical schools increased from about 6,700 to over 8,000. However, many of these new graduates were not able to find an internship and specialty training place to complete their training because the number of places is capped at a level significantly below the number of graduates, so many decided to go abroad to complete their specialty training. In addition, a number of newly trained doctors in Italy also moved abroad to take advantage of better job opportunities, as entry-level salaries of doctors in Italy are very low (between EUR 2,000 and EUR 2,500 per month, even for general surgeons). As a result, between 2010 and 2018, over 8,800 new medical graduates or fully trained doctors emigrated to find internships or regular positions elsewhere in Europe. This was only marginally offset by an inflow of 1,100 foreign-trained doctors during that period.

“The limited supply of new doctors is straining the capacities of some local health units and hospital trusts to fill job vacancies, resulting in growing shortages. To improve the attractiveness of employment contracts, a decree was adopted in 2019, providing more flexibility to regions to offer permanent contracts to replace doctors who are retiring.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Italy: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

“The regulatory framework for nursing has not yet been revised in Italy to allow new roles and task shifting, as is the case in several other EU countries. However, in a survey conducted in 2015-16 among health professionals, health care managers and patients, around 30 % of respondents reported that changes to nurses’ roles had occurred over the past five years in the field of breast cancer management. Furthermore, over 50 % reported that there had been an expansion of the role of nurses in AMI management (Maier et al., 2018). These findings suggest that, in practice, task shifting seems to be emerging in Italy, but regulatory changes may be required to remove barriers to further implementation.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Italy: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and several other nations.

Page last updated Oct. 12, 2020 by Doug McVay, Editor.