Number of doctors employed in the NHS in England 2004-2022

There were over 128 thousand National Health Service (NHS) doctors in England in 2022. The number of doctors employed in the NHS has experienced some fluctuations during the provided time interval, with the number of doctors peaking at approximately 125.6 thousand in 2008.

Specialty breakdown in the UK

The most common specialty of doctors across the United Kingdom overall is medicine, with over a quarter of all doctors falling under this category. 18 percent of doctor’s specialty was in surgery and then anesthetics and intensive care medicine accounted for 13 percent of doctors in the UK.

Diversity among doctors

In 2019, 8.9 percent of the licensed doctors in the UK came from the European Economic Area (EEA). The share of EEA graduates in the UK doctor’s workforce has been decreasing since 2014 when over ten percent of the workforce was made up of graduates from the rest of Europe. Furthermore, over a quarter of doctors in the UK in 2019 came from outside the UK and EEA.