ABSTRACT
The number of working nurses should increase in all of the regions in France. The number of nurses working in public and private sector hospitals will rise 1.5 per cent and 2.0 per cent respectively per year. With close to 520,000 nurses working in France as of 1 January 2010, the nursing profession is the premiere healthcare profession in terms of workforce, surpassing doctors, pharmacists and physiotherapists. Projection models are one of the tools that can be used to shed light upon the tendencies and stakes in the demography of nurses. At regular intervals, the Direction of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics of the French Ministry of Health (DREES) carries out such exercises. In 2030, Limousin, the Languedoc-Roussillon region, Brittany, Corsica and the Midi-Pyrenees region should be the regions with the most independent nurses relative to their populations. Thus, in 2030, Limousin should have 236 independent nurses per 100,000 inhabitants.
