The NHS must invest in AI before ‘more doctors and nurses’ (18 March 2026)

Summary

In 2010, the English NHS employed around 95,000 doctors. Five years later, it was 105,000; five years after that, 124,000; and last year, the total reached 154,000. That’s a 58% increase in 15 years (and 24% in the last five).

The same analysis reveals a 22% increase in the number of nurses (300,000 to 367,000). However, the number of nurses went down during the coalition years. The increase since 2015 has been 33%.

So, in 2010, there were – very roughly - 560 people per doctor and 180 per nurse. Today those numbers are – again very roughly – 380 and 160. respectively.

So what happened to NHS performance, patient satisfaction, and doctor happiness over that period?

Whatever the answer to the NHS’s woes is, it is clearly not simply “more doctors and nurses”, writes Alastair McLellan in this HSJ article.