Up to six percent of these positions are vacant across all the occupational groups in the country’s state hospitals, as well as the Vinzenz Gruppe, Elisabethinen and Barmherzigen Brüder religious clinics, online business magazine Medianet reported.

The Vienna Health Association has the most vacant posts, the magazine found out from Austrian hospital authorities.

It has 1,830 vacancies out of a total of 30,000, with the current wave of flu causing further staff shortages.

But despite medical and nursing posts forming a large part of the vacancies, all the hospital operators said that acute care was guaranteed.

In the Vorarlberg Landesklinik, 3.6 percent and 2 percent of doctors’ and nurses’ posts, respectively, remain unfilled.

However, some services that can be planned would need to be postponed and beds may need to be closed off, the hospitals said.

Some hospitals are trying to swap employees across clinics, while others, such as Austria’s largest hospital owner, the Oberoesterreichische Gesundheitsholding, are bringing in retired staff to help plug the gaps.

There are a variety of reasons for the staff shortages, according to the hospital operators.These include the increasing effects of the baby boomer generation going into retirement and a lack of suitable conditions to make the jobs attractive to those coming in to the profession.