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Density of medical doctors (per 10,000 population) (2012-2020): 30.0
Density of nursing and midwifery personnel (per 10,000 population) (2012-2020): 88.5
Density of dentists (per 10,000 population) (2012-2020): 5.4
Density of pharmacists (per 10,000 population) (2012-2020): 8.4

Source: World health statistics 2022: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development
goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2022. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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Remuneration of Doctors, Ratio to Average Wage (2019)
General Practitioners: 1.7 (Salaried); 3.3 (Self-Employed)
Specialists: 3.2 (Salaried)

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

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Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, Ratio to Average Wage (2019): 1.0
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, USD PPP (2019): $47,400

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

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Share of Foreign-Trained Doctors (%), 2019: 30.3%
Share of Foreign-Trained Nurses (%), 2019: 15.4%

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

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“Although it has been steadily increasing, the number of doctors per 1,000 population is low (2.8, compared with an EU average of 3.6 in 2017). In contrast, the number of nurses per 1,000 population has been declining since 2005, going from 9.2 to 7.8 in 2017, while the EU average steadily increased from 7.3 in 2005 to 8.5 in 2017. This has shifted the ratio of nurses to doctors in the United Kingdom (Figure 9). In 2018, there were 39,000 unfilled nursing vacancies in the English NHS (11 % of the nursing workforce); 80 % of these vacancies were filled by temporary staff. The government response has been to increase the number of nurse training places, but as of September 2018, the intake of new student nurses has remained steady. Shortages are driving innovation in changing workforce roles and career paths, but also affect access to services and waiting times (Section 5.2).”

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“Overall planning for the health and care workforce across the United Kingdom is the responsibility of its four constituent countries. With a view of improving both recruitment and retention, each United Kingdom constituent country maintains a long-term workforce strategy (Anderson M et al., 2021a). Workforce planning for United Kingdom-trained clinical staff in the NHS begins with recruitment to higher education programmes in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and many other health and care professions. The numbers of publicly funded places on such programmes, apart from a small number associated with private university entry, are determined by bodies including Health Education England, NHS Education for Scotland, Health Education and Improvement Wales and the Northern Ireland Medical & Dental Training Agency. Regulatory standards are shared across constituent countries, with the remit of regulatory bodies such as the GMC, General Dental Council (GDC) and Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) being United Kingdom-wide. Furthermore, the scope of the medical royal colleges extends across the United Kingdom, and they play a crucial role in setting educational standards and issuing guidance.”

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“The NHS in England is the world’s fifth largest employer, with, as of 2020, around 1.5 million employees (Rolewicz & Palmer, 2021). In Scotland, as of 2021, the NHS employs around 178 000 staff (Public Health Scotland, 2021c); in Wales, as of 2020, it employs around 100 000 (StatsWales, 2021b) and in Northern Ireland, as of 2020, it employs around 70 000 (Department of Health Northern Ireland, 2020b). A further 2 million people in the United Kingdom are employed to deliver social care services. In the figures below, note that because of differences in the way data are recorded and physicians are defined, they are not fully comparable across United Kingdom constituent countries.

“The United Kingdom is exceptional among other high-income countries, in having lower levels of both nurses and doctors per 1000 population (Fig. 4.3). The degree to which this impacts quality and/or access to health care is unclear. It is possible that this discrepancy is explained by the fact that the United Kingdom makes greater use of non-clinical staff and allied health care professionals, as the United Kingdom compares more favourably to other high-income countries when looking at total numbers of the health and care workforce (Fig. 4.4).”

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“The number of physicians working in the United Kingdom has been steadily increasing for the past 20 years, as shown in Fig. 4.5. In 2000, there were 1.98 physicians per 1000 people, and by 2019 that number had risen to 2.95. However, the United Kingdom still has lower numbers of physicians than many other high-income countries. Despite an ongoing policy agenda to shift care from hospital closer to home within the community, the majority of this increase in physician numbers has been concentrated in hospital consultants (Fig. 4.6). This is a trend seen in all United Kingdom constituent countries, which all continue to experience challenges in improving recruitment and retention of the GP workforce. There have been ongoing attempts to increasing training numbers for GPs across the United Kingdom, and in England there were 4000 training places filled in 2021 compared with 3157 in 2017 (HEE, 2021); however, it will take several years for this increase in training places to impact the GP workforce.”

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“The United Kingdom has lower levels of nurses per 1000 population than most other high-income countries (Fig. 4.7), and this trend has continued over the last decade. These reductions in nursing numbers are more acute among different types of registered nurses. In England, between 2010 and 2020, adult and children’s registered nursing numbers (full-time equivalent) increased by 14% and 59%, respectively, whereas mental health nurses and learning disability registered nurses fell by 8% and 40% respectively (Fig. 4.8). However, some mental health nurses and learning disability nurses are employed by independent organisations that are commissioned by the NHS and therefore are not captured by these data. This outcome may have been driven partially by the Francis Inquiry published in 2013 (Francis, 2013), launched in response to concerns about patient safety in an NHS hospital, that recommended an increase in hospital nursing numbers, thus distorting the employment of nurses to the acute sector at the expense of community health services. There are also different nursing staffing levels across the United Kingdom, with lower numbers of nurses per 1000 population in England, compared with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (Fig. 4.9).”

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World 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 sixteen other nations.

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Page last updated July 16, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.