Romanian psychiatric residents' opinions on factors that influence their decision to emigrate: A 5-year follow-up study

Introduction

To evaluate the situation of migration of psychiatrists from Romania and a prioritization exercise of main factors related with psychiatric residents' decision to emigrate could be a starting point of elaboration of a strategy of reforms. Important changes have been done in economic status of residents in 2018. The impact of these measures in changing opinions was checked.

Methods

This is a cross sectional evaluation study on a randomized selected sample of Romanian psychiatric residents' opinions on factors that influence decision of migration in EU countries in two time points, 2015 and 2020.

Results

Thirty-eight percent of residents intend to work abroad comparing with 78% before the economic changes (25.8% vs. 71.7% for a limited period of time and 15.7% vs. 28.3% intend to emigrate) and 2% vs. 5% intend to leave the specialty. The important factors for decision to emigrate changed from “Better working conditions” (15.7% vs. 37.3% residents) to “Better training”; the factor “respect and appreciation by colleagues” remained important for 19.1% versus 17.9%. “Lack of working place for partner” was considered by 26.7% of responders as an important disadvantage of working abroad. “Being far from family members”, which was considered 5 years ago by 64.2% of responders as an important disadvantage of working abroad, nowadays concerns only 6.7%, probably because it seems easier to go abroad together with the family members.

Conclusions

The factors (better training in psychiatry and psychotherapy, better supervision, more involvement in research) that influence the residents' decision to emigrate represent the starting points for future reforms in educational and medical system in psychiatry.