A survey of Swiss doctors this week confirmed the trends towards more stress, longer waiting times for patients, and growing concerns about staff shortages.
Switzerland has one of the world’s best – and costliest – healthcare systems. But it too has its limits, especially faced with a growing and ageing population. How do doctors deal with the pressure? The gfs.bern research institute, commissioned by the Swiss Medical Association (FMH), asked 1,700 of them. Here are some of the main findings.
The country is facing a ‘dramatic’ shortage of doctors
Around two-thirds of doctors surveyed – and 73% in psychiatric fields – say a shortage of qualified staff is a “rather serious” or “very serious” issue, and the figure is rising. After a decade of stability (the survey has been done annually since 2011), the situation since 2020 has seen two trends: on the one hand, doctors say recruitment is becoming more difficult, while on the other hand, they increasingly fear that there are no longer enough staff in hospitals and clinics to guarantee adequate care.
In a press release this week, the FMH said Switzerland currently lacks around 5,000 doctors and some 15,000 nursing staff. And while the education system aims to churn out 1,300 newly qualified doctors each year, medical specialists reckon this isn’t enough, especially given a looming wave of baby boomer retirements; more than a quarter of doctors in Switzerland are now over 60. Earlier this month, FMH director Yvonne Gilli said a “dramatic” situation was shaping up.
Hospitals are heavily reliant on foreign medical staff
But is it another luxury Swiss problem? The situation doesn’t – at least for now – look so bad on paper. In 2021, Switzerland boasted 4.4 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, placing it towards the upper end of the scale for developed nations, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. As for nurses, Switzerland has the second-highest density in the world behind Finland, at 18.4 per 1,000 inhabitants.
But to maintain this situation – faced with an ageing population and the impending retirement wave – it relies on immigrants and cross-border workers. Almost four in ten doctors are from abroad, just over half of them from Germany. As well as dependence, this can raise moral questions, Jana Siroka from the FMH told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper this week: “we can’t plug our holes with workers from abroad forever; such poaching with higher salaries is unethical,” she said. ...