Updated statistics are available in English on the following links:

http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/minifakta_en/en/

Kingdom of Norway is a Constitutional monarchy with a
Parliamentary democracy.

Population

4 858 199 inhabitants as of 1 January 2010
Norway has an indigenous Sami population as well as five national minorities, defined as groups with long association with Norway.

Official languages

Norwegian (the two forms Bokmål and Nynorsk)
Sami (equal status with Norwegian in parts of Troms and Finnmark counties)

Religion

Protestant Christianity

Currency

Norwegian kroner, NOK

Statistics on physicians in Norway

Updates from http://www.legeforeningen.no/index.gan?id=8449

There are totally about 20,765 physicians under 67 years in Norway (including non-members) (oktober 2009). Among these are:

- 42.9 % women (43.1 % of members, 33.3 % of specialists and 53.3 % of non-specialists)
- 52.3 % approved specialists. Of these are 2943 doctors in General Practice.
- 16.2 % foreign citizens. That is 3,358 foreign citizens, of which 1,208 from the Nordic countries (of which 617 from Sweden and 419 from Denmark), 1,113 from EU-countries, 699 from countries outside of EU/EEA/Switzerland.

There are currently 234 citizens per physician under 67 years of age in Norway, or 4.28 physicians per 1 000 citizens, more than in the other Nordic countries (source: Physicians in the Nordic Countries 2008). Within the OECD, only Greece has clearly more physicians per head of population than Norway, while it is about equally high in Belgium, Italy, Spain and Switzerland (source: OECD Health Data 2008).

General Practice in Norway

We have 4 universities teaching medicine and general practice in Norway (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromso). Norwegian health system is based on providing medical care at the lowest, efficient health care level. You need referral to see a specialist, except from some private offering selected speciality services in major cities. Despite the great increase in physicians in Norway during the latest decades we find an increase in funding and number of doctors in the hospitals and specialist level of services.

All residents in Norway are expected to register with a GP. Patients have the freedom to choose any GP practice available in the country. Once registered most patients stay with their GP practice, though changing is possible two times a year if wanted by the patient. A GP have approximately 300 patients on his list per weekly workday, but there is a great variance. The financing system is approximately 1/3 from patient's payments, 1/3 from National insurance system and 1/3 from the local county. Most GPs are self-employed with a contract with the local county We have a pay-per-consultation system. Income is good compared to GPs in other European countries, but income is highly correlated to work hours. A GP has a great possibility to influence his work hours depending on how many patients the GP will have on his or her list. The tendency is increasing work hours due to more time needed for administration and working together with other health related services (social services, return to work projects etc).

In recent surveys both patients and GPs describe the services in primary health care to be rather good.

Vocational training goals set by the Norwegian Medical Association

Main training 5 years. The main content is at least 4 years in general practice, either full time or less than 50 % involved in other work related to general practice. This could be working for the local community in preventive care, research and/or education related to general practice, social medicine or work in nursing home. Full time work in Norway is 37.5 hours weekly. At least 50 % of your work hours should be with open, unselected patients. From 2006 one year of supervision during the 4 year in practice is required

The last year is a hospital service at any clinical department, somatic or psychiatric. This could take place in an outpatient or inpatient clinic.

Additional training

• Two years in a tutorial group with 120 hours compulsory participation is required. At least one year has to be when the trainee is in General Practice.
• Duty on emergency call need to be at least 40 days.
• The trainee must be able to document basic skills and procedures.
• 400 points (hours) of other educational activities must be documented

National Exchange Coordinator for Norway

Dr Thomas Mildestvedt (Thomas.mildestvedt@isf.uib.no)