Abstract
BackgroundThe migration of medical professionals as a result of the expansion of the European Union is cause for concern. But there is a significant lack of information available about this phenomenon.MethodsSearch of secondary databases about the presence of european doctors working abroad, through two search engines in the Internet (Google and Pubmed) and a survey of professional organisations and regulators in countries of the European Union.ResultsThe United Kingdom has more foreign doctors than all other European countries for which figures are available (Ireland, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Austria and Poland). Some 74,031 foreign doctors are registered in the UK, 30.94% of the total. European countries with the highest percentage of doctors working abroad are Ireland (47.5%, or 10,065 doctors) and Malta (23.1%, 376 doctors). The data obtained from Norway, France and Germany do not indicate an increase in the migration of professionals from countries recently incorporated into the EU.ConclusionThere is significant mobility and heterogeneous distribution of doctors within the EEA and it should be cause for concern among health care authorities. However, there is no evidence about a possible increase in this phenomenon after the recent expansion of the EU.
Highlights
The migration of medical professionals as a result of the expansion of the European Union is cause for concern
Two additional sources were found through de Pubmed search that provide partial information for the year 2001 for Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom (UK), Norway and Switzerland [11], and for the UK (2002, foreign doctors according to country where trained) and two countries outside the European Union (EU), such as Canada (2002) and the United States (2004) [21]
Data were collected during the second quarter of 2005 and tabulated according to the following indicators: 3⁄4 number of foreign doctors and percentage over the total number of physicians in the destination countries where data were available; 3⁄4 number of doctors registered abroad for each European country; 3⁄4emigration factor for each European country [21,23]
Summary
The migration of medical professionals as a result of the expansion of the European Union is cause for concern. There is a significant lack of information available about this phenomenon. The current process of political and economic globalisation, in which European legislation on free movement of persons take place, has caused significant migratory tensions. The recent expansion of the European Union (EU) has caused concern among authorities in recently integrated countries about the loss of professionals, figures for previous expansions do not seem to support this concern [9,12,13]. There is, a significant lack of information. Existing analyses of the migration of medical personnel within the EU is almost exclusively based on data from the (page number not for citation purposes)
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