To minimize the shortage of doctors, several OECD countries have invested in recruiting them abroad
In 2022, the European Union (EU) had a shortage of 1.2 million health professionals, a “serious crisis” that will be worsened with the retirement of a third of doctors and a quarter of nurses in the coming years.
The warning is contained in the 2024 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission (EC) “Health at a Glance Europe” released today, which indicates that 20 EU countries reported a shortage of doctors in 2022 and 2023 and another 15 lack of nurses.
“The European workforce in the health sector faces a serious crisis”, highlights the document which, based on minimum personnel thresholds for universal health coverage, estimates that EU countries recorded a need of approximately 1, 2 million doctors and nurses in 2022.
Portugal is part of a group of six countries – plus Czechia, Greece, Ireland, Latvia and Spain – that have indicated that part of their strategies to maintain or increase the supply of doctors consists of prolonging their professional life, including specific incentives for clinicians to maintain an active life.
In addition to the lack of health professionals already recorded in recent years, there is also their aging, the OECD and the EC also warn, stating that “more than a third of doctors and a quarter of nurses in the EU are over 55 years old and should retire in the next few years.”
Despite this crisis in the healthcare workforce, the study highlights that the health and social care sectors employ more workers now than at any time in history in most EU countries.
In 2022, more than one in ten jobs (10.1%) were in health and social care in EU countries, up from 8.5% in 2002.
On average, in European Union countries, there were 4.2 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022, compared to 3.1 in 2002, says the document, which points to a “particularly rapid” growth in the number of doctors in Portugal and Greece, but warning that data from these two countries refer to all registered clinicians, even if they are not currently practicing.
As for nurses, the OECD and the EC state that their number has increased in the last decade in most EU countries, rising from 7.3 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2012 to 8.4 in 2022.
Portugal is slightly below the European Union average of 8.4% and far from the countries that lead this relationship, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Ireland and Germany, with at least 12 nurses per 1,000 inhabitants.
The report also warns of the “medical desert” in the national geographic distribution of these healthcare professionals, since in many countries, such as Portugal, Austria, Romania, Hungary and Croatia, there is a particularly high density in large cities of specialized healthcare services. .
To minimize the shortage of doctors, several OECD countries have invested in recruiting them abroad, a “quick solution to respond to short-term internal needs”, says the study.
Recruitment of foreign-trained doctors was 17% higher in 2022 than before the pandemic in 2019, from around 28,000 to 33,000 in terms of annual volume. By 2023, more than 40% of doctors in Norway, Ireland and Switzerland and around 50% of nurses in Ireland had foreign training, for example.
According to the report, strengthening the health sector workforce to make health systems more resilient would require significant additional resources compared to the pre-pandemic level, amounting to 0.6% of GDP across the EU.
“In the short term, improving working conditions and remuneration is essential to increase the attractiveness of the profession and retain current health professionals”, argues the OECD, for whom increasing training opportunities for new doctors and nurses is “also vital to increase supply”, although its impact will only be felt in the medium and long term.
