OECD countries tend to rely less on foreign-trained nurses than doctors. In 2023, 8.8% of nurses were trained abroad (Figure 8.26), far below the 19.6% average for physicians Several factors help to explain the gap: nursing degrees are cheaper and shorter, recognition of foreign qualifications can be more difficult and more migrant nurses work in lower-level roles than what they were trained in their home country or leave the profession altogether.
Even so, the number of foreign-trained nurses has grown steeply across OECD countries, reaching more than 800 000 in 2023, an increase of 69% since 2010. The share rose in most OECD countries between 2010 and 2023. While the available time series for Ireland is more limited, the share of nurses educated abroad has increased from 47% in 2021 to 52% in 2023 (with a further increase to 54% in 2024). New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom also have a large and growing share of foreign-trained nurses. As with doctors, foreign-trained nurses are concentrated in a few large destination countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany host over 60% of the total, and the 10 main destination countries together account for 92%.
Although reliance on foreign-trained for nurses is less pronounced than for doctors, foreign-trained nurses still accounted, on average, for one in five (21%) additional nurses in OECD countries between 2010 and 2023 (Figure 8.27). Their contribution was especially marked in the United Kingdom, where foreign-trained nurses represented 83% of the increase in the total number of nurses (increasing from 70 000 to 170 000 in absolute terms). They also contributed substantially to the rise in the number of nurses in Switzerland (58%), New Zealand (55%), Australia (33%), Germany (26%) and the Netherlands (26%). In Ireland where the time series is more limited, foreign-trained nurses made up 92% of the nursing workforce growth between 2021 and 2024.
When focussing on the place of birth instead of the place of training, the number of foreign-born nurses working in OECD countries more than doubled over the past two decades. The main countries of origin of nurses working in OECD countries in 2020/21 were the Philippines (about 270 000 nurses working in OECD countries), India (120 000), Poland (64 000) and Nigeria (54 000). To mitigate potential “brain drain” from countries of origin, the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel was adopted in 2010, promoting ethical recruitment and balancing the interests of sending and receiving countries while safeguarding migrant health workers’ rights. Its 2023 revision introduced the Health Workforce Support and Safeguards List of 55 countries facing the greatest workforce pressures, noting that active recruitment from these countries should be avoided unless accompanied by compensatory measures. In 2020/21, about 257 000 nurses working in OECD countries were born in one of these countries facing acute workforce pressures, with many of them coming from Nigeria (54 000), Haiti (35 800) and Ghana (21 400) (OECD, 2025[1]).
The annual inflows of foreign-trained nurses have risen in almost all major countries of destination since 2010 (Figure 8.28). While most of these countries recorded a dip in inflows in 2020‑2021 during the COVID‑19 pandemic, this was followed by sharp rebounds with higher yearly intakes than before the pandemic. The United Kingdom illustrates both intensive international recruitment efforts and a challenging new profile as a “stepping-stone” to other destinations. Arrivals of foreign-trained nurses grew seven‑fold, from 3 000 to more than 21 000, between 2010 and 2023, but some of these foreign-trained nurses may move to other countries afterward. Applications for Certificates of Current Professional Status, which are required to register abroad, have increased sharply in recent years in the United Kingdom, with more than four‑fifths destined for the United States, Australia or New Zealand (The Health Foundation, 2024[2]). This underlines the risks of relying heavily on international recruitment. Onward migration is neither new nor confined to the United Kingdom. For example, New Zealand has long seen foreign-born nurses depart for Australia under the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement.
