Posted 09 November 2023 - 09:00
Posted 09 November 2023 - 09:00
News
Nurse pay: UK ranks among lowest in global list
A comparative report on global healthcare ranks the UK as low for nurses’ wages and hospital beds per person despite having high levels of overall spending
A comparative report on global healthcare ranks the UK as low for nurses’ wages and hospital beds per person despite having high levels of overall spending
The UK spends more on healthcare, but has fewer hospital beds and pays nurses less, according to a new report comparing healthcare across different countries.
UK performs badly in comparative report on global healthcare measures
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Health at a Glance 2023: Key findings for the United Kingdom found UK nurses earn less than the average worker across the country and the NHS has fewer diagnostic tools such as MRI and CT scanners than most other countries.
The RCN called the findings a ‘source of shame’ for the UK government warning that the health service was spending money in the wrong places.
The report examined several healthcare measures, including nursing pay, finding on average across all OECD countries the remuneration of hospital nurses in 2021 was 20% above the average wage of all employees.
But in the UK, salaries for nurses fell much lower and nurses made less than the average worker, along with nurses in Switzerland, Finland and Latvia, the OECD said.
Report slammed as ‘source of shame’ for UK government
Commenting on the report, RCN chief nurse Nicola Ranger said: ‘Politicians should see this as an indictment and a source of shame.
‘The NHS is spending the money but not in the right places, such as billions on agency staff rather than valuing permanent staff. These figures on salaries show our governments don’t value nursing relative to other professions and explain why we’ve got a record number of unfilled jobs in our health service.
‘It is little surprise that our colleagues are leaving in droves to find jobs overseas or out of the profession entirely. Nursing staff will not tolerate a status quo of poor pay and their patients not getting the care they deserve.’
Compared to other countries, the UK spends a higher than average proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) on ‘health system resources’, spending about 11.3% of its GDP on health in 2022.
Only five countries – the US, Germany, France, Japan and Austria – spend a greater proportion, according to the OECD report.
UK has lower than average number of beds per population
But despite being one of the biggest spenders on health and care, the UK ranks lower on several healthcare measures in the report. For example, across the countries studied by the OECD, there were on average 4.3 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the population in 2021.
But in the UK it was 2.4 beds for every 1,000 people, with just Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia, Chile and Sweden reporting a lower figure.
The UK does compare favourably with other OECD countries on some measures including deaths after stroke, air pollution deaths, avoidable admissions for heart failure and the proportion of older adults who usually receive the flu jab.
In other news
