Table 3 National FTE calculation/estimation methods

Belgium

Medical doctors, dentists and nurses: calculation from actual number of working hours.

Independent professionals: calculation based on the median income of the 45–54 age group (and comparison to it). Working groups: experts’ estimation based on expert knowledge and data.

Finland

FTE = 1 × headcount of full-time persons, 0.6 × head count of part-time persons and 0 × head count of persons on leave.

Rough estimations are based on municipal data. The estimate of part-time is 60 % and was estimated from samples a long time ago.

Germany

The number of FTE is calculated by adding the number of full-time and an appropriate proportion of part-time employees together. FTE are measured by the number of hours of a standard labour contract.

Hungary

The number of part-time workers is converted into full-time equivalent in the following way: the actually performed weekly working hours are divided by the weekly compulsory labour time (40 h or 36 h) as stipulated by the law for individual jobs. The value of the full-time equivalent can be a whole number and one decimal.

Ireland

The whole-time equivalent (WTE) calculation is performed on the basis of the number of hours worked in the 2-week period in the prior month and divided by the standard number of hours worked in a normal 2-week period. This is calculated only for the JQ data collection, and there is no FTE data for other professions.

Italy

The data concerning full-time and part-time (less than 50 % and more than 50 %) is available only for the public sector.

Poland

The headcount is conducted on the basis of the main place of employment. Professionals pursuing the sectoral professions must provide their registers with information on all the places where they are currently starting employment. If they work in more than one place, they have to provide information on all of the other places as well.

Portugal

The Health System Central Administration (ACSS_PT) has data from the National Health System on headcount and full-time equivalent (FTE). FTE is calculated from the actual number of hours/week that a health professional works as a percentage of FTE (35H) or FTE (40H), depending on what is established in the specific contract.

Spain

Simple calculation method

 FTE (man) = 0.917 × male headcount

 FTE (female) = 0.826 × female headcount

Holidays and other work exemptions (illness, teaching, research, etc.) are considered, so that 1 male headcount is not equivalent to 1 FTE.

The Netherlands

For salaried professionals, headcount and FTE are available. For self-employed professionals, only headcount is available from Statistics Netherlands. FTE is available from other sources, and most often, data on FTE for self-employed professionals can be found in surveys. The Advisory Committee of Medical Manpower Planning (ACMMP) has conducted surveys among self-employed doctors to self-report FTE as an estimate for self-employed doctors.

The United Kingdom

In one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, England, FTE is defined (in the workforce census bulletin) as “a standardised measure of the workload of an employee”. An FTE of 1.0 means that a person is equivalent to a full-time worker; an FTE of 0.5 signals that the worker is half (part) time. FTE is the full-time equivalent and is based on the proportion of time staff work in a role.