Migration of Canadian physicians to psychiatry in the United States. I. Dimensions and costs of the net brain drain.

Abstract

The brain drain — the contemporary striking pattern of migration of skilled professions — is, according to Grubel and Scott, “… an international transfer of resources … completely unrecorded in any official balance-of-payments statistics.” They emphasize the necessity of estimating a net brain drain for a country such as Canada. Canada has, in fact, benefited from the migration of economists. This study examines these questions for psychiatrists: how many Canadians have settled in the United States, how many have come to Canada from other countries and what is the net benefit or loss to Canada? It is estimated that 550 Canadian psychiatrists were working in the United States in 1969. This was more than half the number of psychiatrists (1,095) then working in Canada. In turn, 444 of Canada's psychiatrists were immigrants and only five were from the United States. The estimated net brain drain to Canada is thus a loss of about 100 psychiatrists.