The lack of specialist nurses and the inability to retain nurses in clinical practice hamper hospitals to more efficiently use their resources and more generally impedes continued system efficiency gains through increased reliance on nurses. As noted in Section 4, Sweden has the lowest number of hospital beds in the EU and the average length of stay is also among the lowest Bed occupancy rates are very high, to the extent that this has caused a lot of concern among many clinicians and patients about patient safety, given very narrow capacity margins in acute care hospitals and stressful working conditions. Sweden has probably hit the limit in terms of reducing the number of hospital beds and hospital capacity more broadly.