PHSSR Saudi Arabia 2025

44 Sustainability and Resilience in the Saudi Arabian Health System The Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience Figure 7: Average annual turnover for all specialties, Saudi and non-Saudi (2017 –2021)Despite the projected overall surplus of physicians and nurses by 2030, imbalances in skill-mix and geographic distribution of the healthcare workforce will limit progress and efforts should be made to expand the number of Saudi health workers. The current heavy reliance on non-Saudi health professionals, who have a high turn-over rate, threatens the long-term sustainability of the health workforce (Figure 7). In addition, nearly 20% of physicians and 7% of nurses are expected to retire within the coming ten years (Figure 8). Source: National Centre for Health Workforce Planning, 2021. Figure 8: Average age and percentage of healthcare professionals set to retire by 2030 Source: National Centre for Health Workforce Planning, 2021.