Adapting to an Ageing Health Workforce: Alternative Versus the Standard Ageing of Physicians and Nurses in Czechia

This article examines the demographic ageing of physicians and nurses in Czechia between 2012 and 2022, a critical issue amid widespread healthcare professional shortages across Europe. The study applies standard and alternative indicators of demographic ageing to working life tables to identify trends and intensity in the ageing structure of the Czech healthcare workforce.

Aimed at analysing the intensity of the ageing and attrition of healthcare professionals in the system, single-decrement working life tables were constructed employing individual anonymised data obtained from the largest Czech health insurance company, which has concluded contracts with practically all the country's healthcare providers. Standard and alternative indicators of demographic ageing were subsequently applied to the working life tables in an adapted form (e.g. the constant prospective age, ageing index, etc.).

In addition to the most important finding that the healthcare workforce in Czechia is ageing, the results highlight that nearly one-third of female physicians in outpatient care (OC) had only 10 years of working life remaining in the period 2020-2022. A similar situation was observed concerning nurses across all three monitored intervals within the studied period. Overall, the healthcare system has failed to respond to the ageing of large older cohorts either by extending their professional careers or, more importantly, through generational renewal.

Alternative aging indicators reveal that the demographic aging of the Czech health workforce is highly heterogeneous, with nurses posing a more critical threat than physicians due to their lower participation in the workforce after reaching retirement age. Standard workforce planning methods fail to capture these shifting retirement thresholds and dynamics between inpatient and outpatient care. To prevent personnel shortfalls, healthcare policymakers must transition from generic recruitment strategies to creating age-friendly working environments that prolong the professional careers of aging healthcare staff.