ArticleHuman resources for health2016
Gone for good? An online survey of emigrant health professionals using Facebook as a recruitment tool.
Article in Human resources for health, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- A qualitative study exploring the migration decisions of Irish-trained specialist doctors.Human resources for health · 2025Article
- Recruiting refugees to reduce labour shortages in health care professions: experimental evidence on the potential of foreign-language outreach on social media.Human resources for health · 2024Article
- Article
- 'Today Was Probably One of the Most Challenging Workdays I've Ever Had': Doing Remote Qualitative Research with Hospital Doctors During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Qualitative health research · 2022Article
- Doctor Retention or Migration: From Ireland to the World? Comment on "Doctor Retention: A Cross-sectional Study of How Ireland Has Been Losing the Battle".International journal of health policy and management · 2021Article
- Doctor Retention: A Cross-sectional Study of How Ireland Has Been Losing the Battle.International journal of health policy and management · 2021Article
- COVID-19 and doctor emigration: the case of Ireland.Human resources for health · 2021Article
- Facebook Recruitment for Children with Advanced Cancer and Their Parents: Lessons from a Web-based Pediatric Palliative Intervention Study.Progress in palliative care · 2021Article
- Human resources for health interventions in high- and middle-income countries: findings of an evidence review.Human resources for health · 2020Review
- 'Everything was just getting worse and worse': deteriorating job quality as a driver of doctor emigration from Ireland.Human resources for health · 2019Article
- The impacts of training pathways and experiences during intern year on doctor emigration from Ireland.Human resources for health · 2019Article
- Tracking the leavers: towards a better understanding of doctor migration from Ireland to Australia 2008-2018.Human resources for health · 2019Article
- Failing to retain a new generation of doctors: qualitative insights from a high-income country.BMC health services research · 2018Article
- The consequences of Ireland's culture of medical migration.Human resources for health · 2017Article
- Factors influencing trainee doctor emigration in a high income country: a mixed methods study.Human resources for health · 2017Article
- The WHO Global Code: increasing relevance and effectiveness.Human resources for health · 2016Article
- Passing through - reasons why migrant doctors in Ireland plan to stay, return home or migrate onwards to new destination countries.Human resources for health · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHealth professionals, particularly doctors, nurses and midwives, are in high demand worldwide. Therefore, it is important to assess the future plans and likelihood of return of emigrating health professionals. Nevertheless, health professionals are, by definition, a difficult population to track/survey. This exploratory study reports on the migration intentions of a sample of doctors, nurses and midwives who had emigrated from Ireland, a high-income country which has experienced particularly high outward and inward migration of health professionals since the year 2000.
methodsHealth professionals who had emigrated from Ireland were identified via snowball sampling through Facebook and invited to complete a short online survey composed of closed and open response questions.
resultsA total of 388 health professionals (307 doctors, 73 nurses and 8 midwives) who had previously worked in Ireland completed the survey. While over half had originally intended to spend less than 5 years in their destination country at the time of emigration, these intentions changed over time, with the desire to remain abroad on a permanent basis increasing from 10 to 34 % of doctor respondents. Only a quarter of doctors and a half of nurses and midwives intended to return to practice in Ireland in the future.
conclusionsThe longer health professionals remain abroad, the less likely they are to return to their home countries. Countries should focus on the implementation of retention strategies if the 'carousel' of brain drain is to be interrupted. This would allow source countries to benefit from their investments in training health professionals, rather than relying on international recruitment to meet health system staffing needs. Improved data collection systems are also needed to track the migratory patterns and changing intentions of health professionals. Meanwhile, social networking platforms offer alternative methods of filling this information gap.
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