CAREER PREFERENCES AND BRAIN DRAINING THREATS AMONG YOUNG MEDICAL GRADUATES OF SERVICES INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES, LAHORE

Abstract

Objectives:

To determine the career preferences and to assess the brain drain threats among young medical graduates of the Services Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS) Lahore.

Material and Methods:

This cross-sectional study was carried out in students of final year MBBS and house officers of Services Hospital Lahore. A detailed questionnaire was used to collect data and face to face interview was also conducted.

Results:

A total of 310 students, including 144 final year students and 166 house officers, with (61.29%) male and (38.71%) female. (70.97%) of the respondents were intended to migrate abroad to pursue the training. UK and US were the most preferred destinations. The reasons cited for migration abroad were quality of training (63.64%), economic prospect, after training (15.91%), salary during training (9.09%), professional prospect, after training (9.09%), and desire to settle abroad (2.27%). For respondents who had no plan of migrating abroad, the most important reason for staying in Pakistan was family ties (44.44%), followed by a desire to serve the nation (33.33%), professional satisfaction (11.11%), desire to live in Pakistan (5.56%) and lack of resources (5.56%). Surgery was the first choice by 41.9% of the graduates, followed by Internal Medicine (24.2%), General Medicine/Family Medicine (9.7%), Psychiatry (6.5%), Pediatrics (4.8%), Obstetrics and Gynecology (4.8%) while (3.2%) selected dermatology.

Conclusion:

Improvement in the health care system and medical education should be made along with the policy settings to attract young doctors to settle down in Pakistan and to opt high-priority disciplines so that imbalances encountered would be minimal in the future