Number of health professionals not keeping pace

Although there were 48 000 more health professionals in Canada in 1997 than in 1988, an increasing population means that the number of workers per 10 000 people actually declined by 1.7% over the period, from 185 to 182. The Canadian Institute for Health Information reports that only a handful of professions experienced a decrease, but they were the largest ones. The number of doctors per 10 000 Canadians declined by 0.3%, while the number of registered nurses dropped by 5.2%. The biggest decrease was among medical laboratory technologists, where the overall number fell by 10.8% and the number per population declined by 20%. Among the areas experiencing large increases were chiropractic, which rose by 40.3%, to 4472 practitioners.