The latest snapshot of nursing globally highlights persistent nursing shortages and deep inequities in access to nursing worldwide, underscoring the urgent need for Australia to increase support for its current and future nurses.
The World Health Organization’s State of the World’s Nursing 2025 report provides information on nurses from more than 190 countries and has been released to mark International Nurses Day today.
The landmark report estimates a global nursing workforce shortage of 5.8 million. It says to narrow this to a projected 4.1 million by 2030 will require a strong, unified commitment from regions around the world. It also shows high-income countries, like Australia, host 46% of the world’s nurses, despite only representing 17% of the world’s population.
“This is a call to action for governments to invest in nursing, to not only meet Australia’s future healthcare needs but to address disparities in access to nurses worldwide,” said the Australian College of Nursing’s chief executive, Adjunct Professor, Kathryn Zeitz FACN. “Australia is amongst the high-income countries supplementing its nursing workforce by sourcing nurses from low-income countries. This report highlights the moral imperative for us to increase our efforts to reduce our reliance on international recruitment.”
The report shows that low-income countries are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to training nurses with high-income countries producing fewer graduates per active nurses than low-income countries. The report asks for it to be a policy priority to increase enrolments in nursing degrees, which is in line with ACN’s call for a campaign to make nursing a more attractive career option.
“The failure to address workforce shortages place extreme strain on nurses, as there are fewer of them to care for the growing number of patients who are older, sicker and amidst more climate-related health emergencies. This makes it increasingly challenging to retain nurses who are leaving the profession, and it makes it difficult to portray nursing as an attractive career option,” said Adjunct Professor Zeitz.
In the five years since the last State of the World’s Nursing report, there has been progress on some fronts, such as growth in advanced practice nursing roles, more Chief Nursing Officer leadership roles, increased graduate preparation of nurses, and the attraction of more men to the profession.
“It is pleasing to see some progress is being made because of sustained attention from policy makers. We must continue to apply the same attention to enable nurses as leaders working to their full scope of practice and influence,” said Adjunct Professor Zeitz.
“ACN urges policy makers to use the information in the report to ensure that Australia is making the necessary investments in nursing education, jobs, leadership and service delivery to meet the growing healthcare challenges of our population.”
The WHO State of the World’s Nursing 2025 report may be found here: https://www.who.int/news/item/11-05-2025-nursing-workforce-grows--but-inequities-threaten-global-health-goal
A webinar to launch the report will be held at 9pm AEST tonight: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2025/05/12/default-calendar/2025-sown-launch
Contact details:
Lexi Metherell
0449 803 524
Email: [email protected]