Wales has fewer doctors per head than all EU countries except Poland and Romania
BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f3752 (Published 07 June 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f3752Wales is ranked third from bottom in the European Union for the number of doctors per head of population, with only Poland and Romania performing worse, analysis by Plaid Cymru has found.
Wales has 24.6 doctors for every 10 000 people, show medical workforce and population census data. Of the 24 EU countries with available data on the doctor workforce, only Romania and Poland have fewer doctors per 10 000 population, at 23.9 and 20.7, respectively.
England and Northern Ireland rank 21st and 22nd of the 27 countries analysed, with 26.6 and 26.5 doctors per 10 000 people, respectively. Doctor numbers are higher in Scotland at 30.5 per 10 000, whereas the United Kingdom as a whole has 27.7 per 10 000 (table⇓).
Plaid Cymru’s leader, Leanne Wood, and the party’s health spokesperson, Elin Jones, have called on the Welsh government to work on doctor recruitment as a matter of urgency. Wood said, “These figures highlight the long term failure by the Welsh government to effectively plan for the recruitment of doctors. We must make Wales an attractive place for doctors to live and work.”
Plaid Cymru is proposing financial incentives to encourage newly graduated doctors to stay and work in Wales and to boost recruitment from other EU nations.
The Welsh government has talked down the idea of financial incentives to encourage doctors to work in Wales. “Providing additional pay for just a small number of doctors could impact on morale and, in fact, move the recruitment problem from one post to another,” a spokesperson said.
The current vacancy rate for medical posts in Wales is 2.5%, which the Welsh government said was “favourable” in comparison with rates in the other UK nations and in other professions. The government acknowledged that some specialties had a shortage of doctors, and last year it launched a campaign to attract doctors to the country.1
The BMA agreed that there were difficulties attracting doctors in certain specialties to work in Wales but argued that deliberate vacancy control policies by health boards had added to the problem.
“The inadequate number of doctors applies to GP numbers as well as hospital doctors,” said Richard Lewis, the Welsh secretary of the BMA. “The difficulties in recruiting junior doctors are well known, and a fresh approach in making the quality of training and experience for trainees in Wales a top priority must be pursued.”