Summary:

• The WHO highlights that there were about 29.8 million nurses globally in 2023, making nurses the largest health workforce group. The global nursing shortage declined from 6.2 million in 2020 to 5.8 million in 2023, with projections suggesting it could fall to 4.1 million by 2030 if trends continue, though most shortages (about 70%) will remain concentrated in the WHO African and Eastern Mediterranean Regions.
• Approximately 78% of nurses work in countries that contain only 49% of the world’s population. High-income countries hold 46% of nurses but only 17% of the population.
• About 85% of nurses are women. One in seven nurses works outside their birth country; foreign-born nurses constitute 23% in high-income countries.
• In 2023, 62% of countries reported advanced practice nursing roles (up from 53% in 2020). Only 42% of responding countries have provisions to support nurses’ mental health.
• Global midwifery numbers are around 2.2 million, with a shortage of about 900,000 worldwide.

Relevance to your queries:

• Healthcare workforce: Confirms nurses are the largest segment of health workers, underscoring broader workforce gaps and distribution issues.
• Nursing shortage: Provides current global shortage figures, regional concentration, and projected trends through 2030.
• Hospital staffing/physician shortage: Indicates ongoing staffing pressures in nursing as a major component of overall health system capacity; data on physician shortages is not detailed here.
• Healthcare recruitment: Highlights migration patterns, gender distribution, and the rise of advanced practice roles as factors in recruitment and workforce planning.

If you want, I can extract specific figures by region or compare to physician shortages and hospital staffing trends.