Swiss Hospital Nurse and Physician Wages and Staffing Levels, 2018-2020

Swiss acute care hospital data from 2018 to 2020, with 2019 as the index year, was analyzed to examine associations between wages and staffing levels for nurses and physicians. The dataset, derived from routinely collected statistics by the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics, was used in a brief research report by Aleksandra Vasic. It presents Spearman's rank correlation coefficients for these relationships, stratified by hospital level.

Use Cases

• Correlating nurse wages with nurse staffing levels based on hours per inpatient day
• Analyzing the inverse relationship between physician wages and physician staffing levels
• Comparing workforce dynamics across different hospital levels in Switzerland
• Investigating potential mechanisms linking wage structures to hospital outcomes

Strengths

• Data covers three years (2018-2020) from a national statistical office
• Staffing levels are calculated as hours per inpatient day based on full-time equivalents
• Analysis provides specific correlation coefficients (ρ = 0.22–0.38 for nurses, ρ = −0.56 to −0.61 for physicians)

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment

Provenance

Source

Swiss Federal Office of Statistics

Collection Method

Routinely collected hospital data

Time Range

2018-2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-18 05:30:59; freshness should be verified

Geography

Switzerland