The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 26 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Distribution of nursing workforce in the world using Gini coefficient
Open accessAbstract
INTRODUCTION: Unequal Access to human resources for health, reduces access to healthcare services, worsens the quality of services and reduces health outcomes. This study aims to investigate the distribution of the nursing workforce around the world. METHODS: This is a descriptive-analytical study, which was conducted in 2021. The number of nurses and world populations was gathered from World Health Organization (WHO) and The United Nations (UN) databases. The UN has divided world countries based on the Human Development Index (HDI) into four categories of very high, high, medium and low HDI. To investigate the distribution of the nurses around the world, we used the nurse population ratio (per 10,000 population), Gini coefficient, Lorenz curve and Pareto curve. FINDINGS: On average, there were 38.6 nurses for every 10,000 people in the world. Nations with the very high HDI, had the highest nurse/population ratio (95/10,000), while the low HDI nations had the lowest nurse/population ratio (7/10,000). Most nurses around the world were females (76.91%) who were in the age group of 35-44 (29.1%). The Gini coefficient of nations in the each four HDI categories varied from 0.217 to 0.283. The Gini coefficient of the nations between the four HDI categories was 0.467, and the Gini coefficient of the whole world was 0.667. CONCLUSION: There were inequalities between countries all over the world. Policymakers should focus on the equitable distribution of the nursing workforce across all local, national and regional levels.
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“Given the findings of a recent study that approximately 77% of nurses worldwide are female (89), this is not surprising, considering that nurses constitute the largest proportion of all professions in this review.”
From Digital resilience interventions for healthcare workers: a systematic review (2025) · cites this paper as [89]
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Cites
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Cited by
Economocracy: Global Economic Governance
Χαλλουμής, C. C. Κ. (2025) · Economies · doi:10.3390/economies13080230 · Cited by 38
Kattan, W., & Al‐Hanawi, M. K. (2025) · Human Resources for Health · doi:10.1186/s12960-025-01010-6 · Cited by 28
Tomlinson, E., Schoch, M., & McDonall, J. (2025) · Nurse Education Today · doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2025.106928 · Cited by 20
Transforming neonatal nursing in India: challenges, opportunities, and the way forward
Kalyan, G., Joshi, P., Murry, L. L., Campbell-Yeo, M. L., & Tiwari, S. K. (2024) · The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia · doi:10.1016/j.lansea.2024.100522 · Cited by 18
Equity and trends in the allocation of health human resources in China from 2012 to 2021
Chai, Y., Xian, G., Kou, R., Wang, M., Liu, Y., Fu, G., & Luo, S. (2024) · Archives of Public Health · doi:10.1186/s13690-024-01407-0 · Cited by 18
Metadata
- Authors
- Kharazmi, E., Bordbar, N., & Bordbar, S.
- Affiliations
- Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (IR)
- Corresponding author
- Bordbar, Shima
- Venue
- BMC Nursing
- Published
- 2023-05-05
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 151-151
- ISSN
- 1472-6955 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC10161512
- OpenAlex
- W4372335386
- Cited by
- 55
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 11
- FWCI
- 18.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 (tdm)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 (vor)
- Locations
- BMC Nursing (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Shiraz University of Medical Sciences
- Shiraz University
- Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology, Kerman University of Medical Sciences
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Global Health Workforce Issues
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Issues, ethics and legal aspects › Nursing Education, Practice, and Leadership
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Research and Theory › Nursing education and management
- Keywords
- nursing workforce, nurse-to-population ratio, Gini coefficient, Human Development Index, health workforce inequality, Lorenz curve, Pareto curve
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- Kharazmi, E., Bordbar, N., & Bordbar, S. (2023). Distribution of nursing workforce in the world using Gini coefficient. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-023-01313-w
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
