Abstract
BackgroundThe migration of health professionals can have a profound impact on health systems around the globe. The International Organization for Migration's (IOM) Mobility of Health Professionals Research Project (MoHProf) aimed to improve knowledge about the migration of healthcare professionals and understand migration intentions and factors influencing the migration of medical and nursing students.ObjectivesThe study aimed to determine the proportion of nursing and medical students who were intending to emigrate, their attitudes and beliefs about, and the factors influencing their decision to emigrate.MethodThis study was conducted at three medical schools and one nursing school in South Africa (n = 298) amongst 260 medical and 38 nursing students. One hundred and twenty-five students were in the final year of their studies and 143 were in their prefinal year. Thirty students did not indicate the year of their studies. Every student present on the day of data collection completed a questionnaire comprising psychometric and survey-based questions. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data.ResultsMore than a third (37%) of the respondents intended to work or specialise abroad. The majority of medical (58.9%) and nursing (66.6%) students intended to leave SA within five years of completing their medical or nursing studies. The perception of poor working conditions within the health sector, such as long work hours, high patient loads, inadequate resources and occupational hazards, influenced medical students to consider emigrating from South Africa.ConclusionThe high number of medical and nursing students intending to emigrate requires a reassessment of effectiveness of retention strategies for doctors and nurses in the South African healthcare system and actions to improve working conditions in the public healthcare sector.
Highlights
Since the turn of the century the impact of globalisation and increasingly porous country borders has facilitated an increase in the migration of healthcare practitioners (HP) between countries
South African nurses were documented to have emigrated from South Africa (SA) to the UK,[3] the number had decreased to 1418 in 2003.4 By 2004, 7% of the total nursing workforce in SA had left SA to work in seven Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (Denmark, Canada, Finland, Portugal, USA, UK and Ireland), whilst slightly over a third of the South African doctors (37%, n = 12 136) who had been trained in SA were living in eight OECD member countries (Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Portugal, USA and UK).[3]
Far fewer nursing students participated in the study compared to medical students, the findings suggest that a higher proportion of nursing respondents than medical respondents would like to emigrate within two years after graduating
Summary
Since the turn of the century the impact of globalisation and increasingly porous country borders has facilitated an increase in the migration of healthcare practitioners (HP) between countries. This has resulted in a ‘reverse subsidy’ of HPs from poor to rich countries, as knowledge and skills are transferred from developing to developed nations. Statistics from the South African Department of Health indicate that in 2006 almost 9000 SA doctors (n = 8921) and 6844 nurses and midwives were working in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and USA.[5]. The International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Mobility of Health Professionals Research Project (MoHProf) aimed to improve knowledge about the migration of healthcare professionals and understand migration intentions and factors influencing the migration of medical and nursing students
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