Nurses per 100,000 Inhabitants in Europe by Country (2024)
Practising nurses per 100,000 inhabitants across 30 European countries in 2024: 1,524 in Norway against 106 in Romania, where only nursing professionals are counted. Eurostat figures.
Data
| # | Country | per 100,000 inhabitants | Change vs 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | 1,524 | -33 |
| 2 | Luxembourg | 1,472 | +7 |
| 3 | Ireland | 1,419 | +53 |
| 4 | Finland | 1,290 | +15 |
| 5 | Germany | 1,251 | +26 |
| 6 | Switzerland | 1,215 | +12 |
| 7 | Netherlands | 1,123 | +10 |
| 8 | Sweden | 1,114 | +14 |
| 9 | Denmark | 1,053 | +6 |
| 10 | Iceland | 1,032 | +36 |
| 11 | Austria | 1,015 | -15 |
| 12 | Czechia | 799 | +7 |
| 13 | Malta | 797 | +51 |
| 14 | Lithuania | 770 | +23 |
| 15 | Liechtenstein | 737 | +37 |
| 16 | Portugal | 721 | +29 |
| 17 | Serbia | 711 | +11 |
| 18 | Italy | 692 | +9 |
| 19 | Estonia | 683 | +19 |
| 20 | Poland | 601 | +12 |
| 21 | Spain | 573 | -15 |
| 22 | Slovenia | 521 | +11 |
| 23 | Cyprus | 519 | -2 |
| 24 | Hungary | 460 | +9 |
| 25 | Bulgaria | 441 | -2 |
| 26 | Latvia | 414 | -1 |
| 27 | Croatia | 265 | +13 |
| 28 | Greece | 248 | +7 |
| 29 | Montenegro | 122 | +2 |
| 30 | Romania | 106 | +6 |
About this Dataset
Norway reports 1,524 practising nurses per 100,000 inhabitants; Romania reports 106. Read the bottom of this table with the category in mind: Romania reports only nursing professionals; Eurostat's broader count that adds associate professional nurses puts it at roughly 840 per 100,000. The raw 14-to-one ratio is therefore mostly a definitional gap, not a staffing one.
Nurse density measures how much labour a health system actually buys. Doctor numbers are constrained by training pipelines and professional regulation; nurse numbers are a budget line, reset every year.
Norway, Luxembourg, Ireland and Finland lead, all at 1,290 per 100,000 or above, and all of them are systems where a large publicly funded long-term care sector employs nurses at scale. Romania, Montenegro, Greece and Croatia report 265 or fewer, against a panel average of 799 and a median of 729. Greece is the entry that matters most when the health workforce tables are read together: 28th of 30 here at 248, and first among these countries on practising physicians. A system can be doctor-rich and nurse-poor, and the tasks nurses perform elsewhere then fall to doctors, to auxiliary staff, or to families.
Part of the bottom of this table is definitional rather than real. Eurostat's series admits more than one qualification concept, and a country reporting only the narrowest professional category records a far lower density than one that includes associate professional nurses. That caveat is worth hundreds of nurses per 100,000 at the margin, so the gap between the top and the median, about 2.1 to one, is the sounder measure of real difference.
Every row is the figure published for 2024; no value is carried over from an adjacent year to fill a gap. Belgium and France have not published a 2024 figure and are left out rather than carried forward from an older year. The chart tracks a fixed panel of 24 countries: those reporting in every year from 2009. The line therefore moves because the countries moved, not because the sample changed. Figures count practising nurses under Eurostat HLTH_RS_PRS2, expressed per 100,000 inhabitants. Countries differ in whether they report practising, professionally active or licensed staff and in which nursing categories they include; countries reporting only nursing professionals appear with lower densities than their actual nursing workforce, so the lower end of the range is understated.
Country pages: Norway · Luxembourg · Ireland · Finland · Germany · Switzerland · Netherlands · Sweden · Denmark · Iceland · Austria · Czechia · Malta · Lithuania · Liechtenstein · Portugal · Serbia · Italy · Estonia · Poland · Spain · Slovenia · Cyprus · Hungary · Bulgaria · Latvia · Croatia · Greece · Montenegro · Romania