Brexit and wage caps are blamed for UK doctor and nurse shortage

Existing “resilience challenges” in the UK’s healthcare workforce could become increasingly serious, the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have warned in a joint analysis of the state of healthcare in the UK,1 one of 28 individual EU country studies released last week.

Using 2015 data, the report on the UK noted that, despite steady increases in recent decades, the number of doctors in the country was the third lowest in the EU, at 2.8 per 1000 population (the EU average is 3.6 per 1000). Nursing numbers …