There is a shortage of doctors, although there are more and more of them and schools are still allowed to employ teachers without a diploma

There are more and more doctors in Switzerland. However, there is still a shortage of trained personnel. This is reported by the professional association FMH in its statistics for the past year.

In 2023, 41,100 doctors worked in Switzerland – this corresponds to 35,488 full-time equivalents. According to FMH’s physician statistics published on Wednesday, this is 2.3 percent more than the year before.

More than half of doctors (53.6 percent) work full-time in the practice sector, 44.8 percent in the hospital sector and 1.6 percent in another sector such as administration, insurance companies or associations. The share of women in the hospital sector is 49.1 percent, slightly higher than in the practice sector (44.7 percent).

Last year, every second working doctor in Switzerland was 50 years or older; one in four was 60 years or older.

Almost half of working doctors (40.4 percent) come from abroad: an increase of 0.9 percent within a year. According to the FMH, this share is continuously increasing: since 2013 by 170 percentage points from 9,756 to 16,590 doctors.

By far the largest share of foreign skilled workers comes from Germany (50.2 percent), ahead of Italy (9.5 percent), France (7.1 percent) and Austria (6 percent). (rbu/sda)