Last updated: 27 October 2026
The NHS has a chronic workforce crisis, driven by years of inadequate workforce planning, lack of accountability for workforce issues and recurrent failure to value and invest in staff. Without action to better train and retain the doctors the NHS needs, staffing levels with continue to fall short of demand, further impacting working conditions, waiting lists and care quality.
The latest medical care workforce trends for England are set out below and are regularly updated with new data on topics such as workforce numbers, vacancies and retention rates.
Additional information is available on the general practice workforce, and workforce issues across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
FTE / headcount
Workforce data can be measured in either headcount or FTE (full time equivalent). Headcount refers to the number of individual doctors, while FTE is the proportion of full-time contracted hours that the postholder is contracted to work. 1 FTE would indicate they work full-time hours, 0.5 FTE indicates working half that time.
As FTE reflects the true number of clinical hours the NHS has at its disposal, FTE is used throughout this page, unless otherwise stated. Full-time is taken to be 37.5 hours - the FTE definition used by NHS Digital. This calculation is for illustrative purposes only, as we recognise employed doctor contracts can be 40 hours.
For international comparisons we use OECD data. However, this should be interpreted with caution due to international differences in how doctors are defined and differences between definitions, such as 'practising' and 'professionally active', that may create variation across countries.
We have calculated the doctor to population ratio for England ourselves (as OECD only supply this figure for the United Kingdom, not its constituent countries) using NHS Digital general practice, PCN and secondary care workforce statistics and mid-2023 ONS population estimates' instead of 'We have calculated the doctor to population ratio for England ourselves (as OECD only supply this figure for the United Kingdom, not its constituent countries) using NHS Digital general practice and secondary care workforce statistics and mid-2022 ONS population estimates.
England has fewer doctors per capita than other comparable countries
The average number of doctors per 1,000 people across the EU members of the OECD, for which data is available, is currently 4. Germany has 4.7. England, by comparison, has just 3.2 and would need an additional 47,000 doctors to reach the OECD EU average.
There is also significant regional variation in the distribution of doctors, with some areas falling even further below the OECD EU average. The East of England, for example, has just 2.58 doctors per 1000 people.
The medical workforce is growing but unevenly and at a rate that lags behind rising demand for care
Overall, the number of doctors working in the NHS is steadily increasing, with growth concentrated in secondary care settings. In July 2026 (latest data), NHS secondary care had more than 48,500 more FTE doctors than September 2015 – a 46% increase. The annual rate of growth has slowed in recent years. In July 2024 the annual rate of growth was 5.2%. By July 2026 (latest data), the annual rate of growth dropped to 3.5%.
This level of secondary care workforce growth has not been sufficient to meet demand, which is also rising, and vacancy levels remain stubbornly high as a result. In June 2026 (latest data), there were 9,390 secondary care medical vacancies in England, amounting to 5.6% of all medical posts. Deficiencies in the way vacancies are recorded mean this is likely to underestimate the true shortfall of staffing.
General practice has seen very little growth over the same period. There were only 36 additional fully qualified GPs (FTE) in September 2026 (latest data) than in September 2015. Yet the number of patients during this time has risen considerably. A single full-time GP is now responsible for an average of 2143 patients. This is a 10.6% increase in the number of patients per GP since 2015. Full detail can be found on our pressures in general practice analysis page.
A failure to value the doctors we already have means that too many are pushed to leave the NHS
Alongside a failure to train enough doctors, the health service is struggling to hold onto the doctors it has. For every doctor that leaves, pressures worsen for those who stay, increasing the likelihood that they too will leave the profession.
In the year to March 2026, 20,719 (12.8%) doctors left NHS secondary care organisations. Medical leaver rates have been decreasing year-on-year since 2023, driven predominantly by growth in the overall size of the medical workforce, but they remain high. In the year to March 2026, for every 10 secondary care doctors that joined an NHS organisation around 8 left.
While some doctors leave to retire, too many doctors are pushed to leave the NHS early for largely preventable reasons.
Aside from retirement, wanting to practice abroad is the most commonly stated reason for doctors across the UK choosing voluntary erasure from the medical register or relinquishing their license to practice, cited by 29% of exiting doctors in 2024 (latest data). In 2025 (latest data), the GMC found that better working conditions, and a perception that doctors are treater better in the destination country, was cited by 77% of doctors who want to move to practice medicine abroad. Pay was cited as a reason for 65% of doctors who want to move to practice medical abroad, where better terms and conditions are regularly offered.
For doctors, persistent staff shortages mean excessive workloads . The latest NHS staff survey (2025) found that 41.1% of medical and dental staff reported feeling unwell because of work related stress and 29.7% felt burnt out because of their work. The GMC’s Workplace experiences 2026 report found that a third of doctors (36%) felt unable to cope with their workload at least once a week, and 60% regularly worked beyond their rostered hours.
All the while, doctors are left chronically undervalued and underpaid, leaving many to feel that the NHS shows a disregard for their professional expertise, competence and skills. The NHS staff survey reports that just 49.7% of medical and dental staff in England are satisfied with their level of pay, and only 42.97 are satisfied with the way their organisation values their work.
