Nurses, including midwives, are an integral component of primary and tertiary care provision across the Latin American and Caribbean region. While roles in both care settings differ by country, nurses and midwives tend to feature in the front lines of tertiary care provision, a context brought to the forefront by persistent capacity challenges in the face of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Although countries in the region have tended to feature a lower density of nurses and midwives by population compared to OECD counterparts, recent OECD research notes that seven Latin American and Caribbean countries have reported improved densities of both care professions in national reports (OECD, 2022[1]).
While OECD member states average a high rate of nurses when adjusted for population at approximately 10.3 nurses per 1 000 people, some variation is observed in countries of the region. Antigua and Barbuda, reporting a rate just under 9.1 nurses per 1 000 people, is the highest in the 33 countries of the region. Haiti featured the lowest rate of nurses when adjusted for population, at approximately 0.4 nurses per 1 000 people. Overall, the LAC region observed a rate of under 3.6 nurses per 1 000 people (Figure 8.4).
The ratio of nurses to doctors is an indicator of the quality of patient care in the clinical environment. Among OECD member states, the average is 2.7 nurses for every doctor when adjusted for population. Several countries in the region feature ratios above this figure, including Dominica, the highest in the region at 5.5 nurses per doctor in the country. The lowest in the region, Colombia, observed a ratio of 0.6 nurses per doctor. Overall, accounting for differences in population, a ratio of 1.9 nurses to every doctor was observed on average for the Latin American and Caribbean region (Figure 8.5).
