News

It is no surprise that women dominate health-care occupations in Canada, but a new study attaches some numbers to the situation.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information says women make up about 80 per cent of the health-care workforce.

Women continue to dominate in nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and their ranks are increasing in male-dominated health-care professions.

Last year, the institute said, 56 per cent of family doctors under age 40 were women, while in the 60-and-over group, only 15 per cent were.

And 64 per cent of pharmacists under 40 last year were women.

Francine Anne Roy, director of health resources information at the institute, says it is important to understand the work force to plan for the future of health care in Canada.

Another institute manager, Deborah Cohen, said female occupational therapists and physiotherapists work fewer hours in their 30s and 40s compared to men, so it is important to recognize this for planning purposes.

There are more than one million people working in health-care occupations in Canada, the institute said.

Its findings are contained in a series of reports released Monday, with details on supply, distribution, migration, education, demographic trends and work patterns for seven occupations.

The reports found that doctors and physiotherapists had the highest percentage of internationally trained professionals. Twenty-two per cent of doctors and 15 per cent of physiotherapists had international training. (No data were available for pharmacists.)

For the six occupations that were studied, internationally trained workers were most likely to have been educated in Britain, the United States, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Ireland and Hong Kong.

The growth rate in the work force of registered nurses was close to 2 per cent annually over the previous six years, the institute said. The work force comprised almost 258,000 RNs in 2007.

There were 782 RNs per 100,000 Canadians, a number that has remained about the same since 2005. The highest ratio previously recorded was 824 per 100,000 in the early 1990s.