Australia’s continued reliance on nurses trained in low-income nations is widening an already stark global workforce gap, the World Health Organization warns in its new State of the World’s Nursing 2025 report, released for International Nurses Day.
The study puts the present worldwide shortfall at 5.8 million nurses and projects only a modest improvement — 4.1 million — by 2030 unless every region ramps up domestic education and retention efforts.
High-income countries, which include Australia, host the vast majority of the profession: 78 % of the world’s nurses care for just 49 % of the global population. One in seven nurses is foreign-born, a figure that rises to 23 % in wealthy nations.
“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,” Australian College of Nursing (ACN) Chief Executive Officer Adjunct Professor Kathryn Zeitz said.
Zeitz said that Australia’s recruitment of nurses from countries already facing critical staffing gaps compounds those inequities. “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 WHO data show low-income nations are graduating proportionally more nurses than rich countries, yet many of those graduates leave for better-resourced systems. The report urges governments to make boosting nursing enrolments a “policy priority” — a recommendation the ACN has pressed for domestically with a campaign to make nursing a more attractive career.
“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,” Zeitz said.
Since the last State of the World’s Nursing in 2020, the profession has recorded gains: more countries now have chief nursing officers, advanced practice roles are expanding, and the share of men in nursing is inching upward.
“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,” Zeitz added.
The ACN wants federal and state governments to treat the WHO findings as a blueprint for local action, encompassing education funding, job creation, leadership development and better working conditions.
“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.”
With almost one-fifth of the global nursing workforce set to retire within the next decade, the report warns that time to rebalance supply is running short. Australian health services, it says, will have to decide whether to keep drawing talent from low-income nations — or build a pipeline robust enough to stand on its own.
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Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.
