Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Yasser Moullan and Xavier Chojnicki explor whether training or immigration policies provide a more effective reponse to shortages of physicians within the OECD

Shortage of physicians is a big challenge in many OECD countries, and policy makers try to tackle this issue by increasing the number of students entering medical school as well as by recruiting internationally. In this working paper Yasser Moullan and Xavier Chojnicki analyse the strategies OECD governments adopt, and explore when these policies are effective in addressing medical shortages.

Due to the length of time medical training requires, the impact of expanding medical school capacity should take longer to be effective than recruiting foreign-trained physicians. The authors have built a dataset that comprises information about physician shortages, the number of medical school graduates, and the number of foreign-trained physicians. They find that OECD governments, after a period of shortage, produce a higher number of medical graduates in the long run but in the short term face an increasing emigration of their practicing physicians and so carry out a lot of recruitment of physicians from abroad.

Their simulation results show that only recruiting abroad has limits in the long term, but also point out its appropriateness as a strategy, in the short term, where there are recurrent cycles of shortage or surplus in physicians. Their findings have implications for health care planning within the OECD and for more effective policy making in the field of medical recruitment.

Download the working paper

Similar stories

Working Paper: Immigration policy effects – A conceptual framework

Liv Bjerre provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of immigration policy effects by arguing that immigration policies have varying effects on different categories of immigrants whether they are regular immigrants, asylum seekers or irregular immigrants

Return Migration in Africa

IMI Researcher, Dr. Marie-Laurence Flahaux together with Dr. Bruno Shoumaker and Dr. Thierry Eggerickx edit a new issue of 'Space, Populations, Societies' which seeks to explore the understudied aspects of return migration in Africa

Working Paper: Hopes and fears of migrants’ contribution to political change, a Tunisian case study

Marieke van Houte explores complexities of political change in relation to mobility and immobility through a fascinating Tunisian case study that challenges conventional notions that transnational political engagements contribute to democratization

Exploring domestic & diasporic non-government responses to the Liberian Ebola Crisis

New article published in the academic journal, African Affairs by IMI Senior Research Officer Robtel Neajai Pailey

Legal invisibility was the best thing to happen to me

Senior Research Officer Robtel Neajai Pailey shares her experience of living as an undocumented migrant in the US for 14 years in a remarkable piece for Al Jazeera

Call for papers for new journal Migration and Society

The first issue of the journal focuses on Hospitality and hostility towards migrants: Global perspectives