UK: Medical Personnel in the United Kingdom

Density of medical doctors (per 10,000 population) (2009-2018): 28.1
Density of nursing and midwifery personnel (per 10,000 population) (2009-2018): 82.9
Density of dentists (per 10,000 population) (2009-2018): 5.3
Density of pharmacists (per 10,000 population) (2009-2018): 8.8

Source: World health statistics 2019: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/324835/9789241565707-eng.pdf
https://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/2019/en/

“As of 2014, 1.57 million people were working for the NHS (ONS, 2014c), making it the largest employer in the United Kingdom, and indeed in Europe (NHS Jobs, 2015). Between 2000 and 2009 the NHS workforce expanded at an average annual rate of 3.4% (The King’s Fund, 2013c). 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 countries.

“The number of physicians working in the United Kingdom has been steadily increasing for the past 25 years, as shown in Figure 4.4. In 1990 there were 162 physicians per 100 000 people, and by 2013 that number had risen to 278. However, the United Kingdom still has among the lowest number of physicians per capita in the EU, despite the rapid increase in numbers between 1997 and 2010. While all specialties have been growing, the lowest growth rate has been in psychiatry, and the rate of growth in GP numbers is also insufficient to meet current or future demand (Addicott et al., 2015).”

Source: Cylus J, Richardson E, Findley L, Longley M, O’Neill C, Steel D. United Kingdom: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2015; 17(5): 1–125.
http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/publications/health-system-reviews-hits
http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/publications/health-system-reviews-hits/full-list-of-country-hits/united-kingdom-hit-2015

“As shown in Figure 4.5, the number of nurses has decreased rather sharply since 2010, when health spending in the United Kingdom fell. After a high-profile scandal over the quality of care at one NHS foundation trust (Robert Francis’s 2013 report), trusts that were worried about safe staffing levels hired more nurses (The King’s Fund, 2013d). The number of nurses in the United Kingdom is consistently above the EU average, as is the nurse to doctor ratio (Figure 4.6), although this average conceals a wide variation across the EU. Despite this growth in staff numbers in the United Kingdom, shortages remain a concern, particularly as providers have to rely on more costly solutions such as hiring agency staff as the number of patients per nurse has been increasing too (Addicott et al., 2015).”

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Page last updated June 2, 2020 by Doug McVay, Senior Policy Analyst.