Health care workforce
For many years, it was difficult to obtain comparable data about health care workforce in the Nordic countries, because of different data sources and definitions. Since 2004, NOMESCO data on health care workforce follows the definitions of the OECD System of Health Accounts (SHA), which uses the NACE classification of occupations, and is linked to the national registers of authorized health care staff. This has improved comparability.
Definitions and method
The group ‘qualified auxiliary nurses’ is subdivided. Those with an education of 18 months or more remain in this group, while those with less education are in the group ‘other health care personnel’.
‘Other health care personnel with a higher education’ is defined as personnel with a university degree, such as dieticians and pharmacists. Furthermore, for physicians a group is included with physicians who do not work in the social and health care sectors, and not with medicine.
It should be noted that the data on the number of employed personnel is valid for a given day in a year and does not reflect the number of health care professionals in full-time equivalents.