Physicians per capita, ireland ranks 41

imported_guy

behind alot of 3rd world countries (some of the figures are pretty old but irish one is from 2004)
cuba has nearly 6 per 1000
north korea has 3.29 per 1000

ireland = 2.79 per 1000
average is 1.79

we are still better than US/UK but i think 41 is kinda low? what do you think?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_phy_per_1000_peo-physicians-per-1-000-people

nesf

Yeah but looking at Norway, the Netherlands and other very well respected European healthsystems they aren't that different in rank to us. I wouldn't stress out about such a crude measure of healthcare tbh.

bleg

Yes. For example the life expectancy of Cuba is lower than Ireland's.

imported_guy

bleg wrote: »

Yes. For example the life expectancy of Cuba is lower than Ireland's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

cuba is only 8 places below ireland in terms of life expectancy, besides life expectancy is a worse way to measure quality of healthcare than physicians per capita, because countless factors affect life expectancy at the individual level (e.g. nutrition, exercise, income, education, risk-taking, and stress), i dont really need a doctor to make me feel happy i just need one incase IF i ever get sick.

nesf

imported_guy wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

cuba is only 8 places below ireland in terms of life expectancy, besides life expectancy is a worse way to measure quality of healthcare than physicians per capita, because countless factors affect life expectancy at the individual level (e.g. nutrition, exercise, income, education, risk-taking, and stress), i dont really need a doctor to make me feel happy i just need one incase IF i ever get sick.

Yeah but it makes feck all difference to have more doctors per head of population if those doctors don't have access to modern drugs, techniques and technology. A lot of ex-Soviet countries have high doctor per capita stats but do not have access to healthcare of a standard seen in Western European countries with lower doctor per capita levels and doctor per capita does not account for differing levels of training across countries (and proportions, it's feck all good to have access to loads of cardiologists if what you need is an oncologist etc). It's a crude measure precisely because it fails to capture quality of care in a country.

nesf

Actually, here's a bizarre one: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hos_bed-health-hospital-beds

We have more than double the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people than the UK. Methinks that there's a different definition of hospital bed in the two countries.

Capt'n Midnight

nesf wrote: »

We have more than double the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people than the UK. Methinks that there's a different definition of hospital bed in the two countries.

They probably don't count trolleys over there

maybe they distinguish between private / public / trust beds ?