Global issues that are close to home

In my previous article, I wrote about the publication of the World Health Organization's (WHO) State of the World's Nursing 2025 report (WHO, 2025a). Launched on International Nurses Day with a live webinar now available on YouTube (WHO, 2025b), the report serves as a strategic tool to drive investments and actions in nursing globally. It provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis, incorporating new indicators on education capacity, advanced practice nursing and remuneration, which are the subjects of current professional debates in the UK.

The report shares progress made since the last State of the World's Nursing publication in 2020 (WHO, 2020). There has been a substantial improvement in data availability and reporting from WHO member states, which was cited as leading to greater visibility globally.

An increase in the estimated number of nurses globally has taken the total from 27.9 million in 2018 to 29.8 million in 2023. This growth is attributed both to improved data reporting, including private sector data, and a real increase in the workforce size. Consequently, the estimated global nursing shortage has shown improvement. Using the 2013 benchmark density of 27.5 nurses per 10 000 population, the shortage was estimated at 6.2 million in 2020, reducing to 5.8 million in 2023, and is projected to decline further to 4.1 million by 2030.