Sourabh Aggarwal, Abhishek Rai, Khushbir Singh Bath, Harkirat Singh, Vishal Sharma.
Migratory Trends of Medical Graduates in India.
J Pioneering Med Students Jan ;4(4):155-8.

BACKGROUND: India has one of the largest medical education systems in the world but approximately one-third of fresh medical graduates leave India every year for residency training or practice abroad, with approximately 2.5-5% leaving for the United States. Although physician ‘brain drain’ has long been recognized, various interventions designed to address it has been constrained by a limited understanding of this migration, usually stemming from the unavailability of detailed data. This study was conducted to analyze the career trends of recent medical graduates and to identify the reasons behind those trends. METHODS: A questionnaire was emailed to recent medical graduates from a medical school asking about the preference for further training, and reasons for their preference including the relative importance of each reason (very important, slightly important or not important). Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS v.17. RESULTS: The questionnaire was e-mailed to 100 students. Sixty-six responses were deemed appropriate for analysis. Forty-four students (66.7%) choose to do post-graduation in India, with 22 (50%) of them wishing to go abroad in future for further studies and 5 (11.36%) agreeing to change decision if they could go back in time. Twenty-two students (33.3%) choose to go to the United States, with 14 (63.6%) wishing to return back to India after completion of studies while 8 (36.4%) wished to settle abroad, and 2 (9.1%) agreeing to reverse decision if they could go back in time. There was no statistical difference in demographic profiles of students preferring training in India versus the United States. CONCLUSION: This study found that many students (33.3%) prefer going abroad for post-graduation training. The reasons considered most important for choosing to go abroad included better job opportunities, better quality of life, better hospital infrastructure and facilities, and a comparative difficulty to get into desired sub-specialty in the home country (India). This is the first study that examines the preference of medical students and reasons for deciding a particular career path.

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