The number of new medical graduates is a key indicator to assess the number of new entrants into the medical profession who will be available to replace retiring doctors and to respond to any current or future shortages. Numbers in any given year reflects decisions made a few years earlier related to student admissions, either through explicit numerus clausus policies (the setting of quotas on student admissions) or other decision-making processes.
Overall, the number of medical graduates across OECD countries increased by 75% between 2000 and 2023, rising from 93 000 in 2000 to 163 000 in 2023. In 2023, the number of new medical graduates in OECD countries ranged from fewer than 8 per 100 000 population in Israel, Canada, Korea and Japan, to more than 20 per 100 000 in Latvia, Ireland, Lithuania and Denmark (Figure 8.19).
Medical graduate numbers were even greater in Bulgaria and Romania, two OECD accession countries, mainly driven by a strong rise in the number of international medical students. Many medical schools in the Slovak Republic, Czechia, Hungary and Poland also attract a growing number of international medical students. In Ireland too, the high number of medical graduates is due to a large share of international medical students, who in recent years have made up about half of all students. Many of these international students in Irish medical schools come from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. For all these countries, in most cases, international students do not stay in the country after graduation. In Ireland, this results in a paradoxical situation where they need to import doctors trained in other countries to address doctor shortages (OECD, 2019[1]). In Israel, the low number of domestic medical graduates is compensated for by the high number of foreign-trained doctors (about 60% of all doctors). A large share of these foreign-trained doctors are Israeli-born doctors who have returned to Israel after completing their first degree abroad because of the limited number of places in Israeli medical schools (OECD, 2023[2]).
The number of medical graduates relative to the size of the population has increased in most OECD countries since 2013, in response to concerns about shortages of doctors. In many countries, this has been achieved through both the creation of new medical schools and the expansion of student intakes in existing medical schools. Korea is the only OECD country where the number of medical graduates relative to population size and the absolute number of graduates decreased at least slightly between 2013 and 2023, reflecting the fact that there was no increase in student admissions since 2006 and student dropout rates increased slightly. In February 2024, the former Korean government announced a plan to increase the number of medical students by two‑thirds, but this was met with fierce opposition from junior doctors, who argued that resources should be used instead to improve working conditions and pay rates to make jobs in some core hospital departments and specialties more attractive (Min, 2024[3]).
Many OECD countries have increased not only the number of students admitted to medical schools, but also the number of medical graduates going into general medicine for their postgraduate internship/residency training to address specific shortages of general practitioners (OECD, 2023[4]). In 2023, the share of postgraduate training places in general medicine averaged 27% across 18 OECD countries with available data. It ranged from around 45% of all new residents in Canada, the United Kingdom and Belgium to less than 15% in Israel, Germany, Slovenia and Mexico (Figure 8.20). In France, since 2017 at least 40% of all postgraduate training places must be allocated to general medicine. In Belgium, the government announced in 2022 a plan to gradually increase the share of postgraduate training places allocated to general medicine from 39% in 2022 to 47% by 2028 (Vandenbroucke, 2022[5]). However, in many countries it has proved challenging to attract sufficient numbers of medical graduates to fill available training places in general medicine, given its lower perceived prestige and remuneration (see section on “Remuneration of general practitioners”).
