Panel: Beyond brain drain and triple win: Effects of health worker emigration on origin countries

Abstract

The migration and recruitment of health care workers has rapidly gained relevance and receives increasing attention from scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners in the public and private sectors. Oftentimes overlooked, however, are the implications for origin countries, especially when they experience such outmigration at a large-scale, for example Western Balkan countries or Turkey. Deteriorating quality and availability of health care services can contribute to more out-migration and undermine established sectors such as medical tourism. The utility of nursing or medical degrees for migration also influences people’s career choices and contributes to a shortage of skilled professionals in other sectors in the mid- to long-term. At the same time, governance-related aspects in the origin country can be driving this kind of migration as much as the wage differential. Without mechanisms regulating the fair distribution of costs and benefits between states, this migration drains origin countries of much needed human resources and the public funds invested to produce them, even more so as return of health care workers is not common. Emergence and involvement of private recruitment agencies may bring about additional regulation needs.

Against this background, the panel will present findings regarding the implications of health worker migration for origin countries in and beyond their health care sectors. It will also analyze policyresponses by origin countries as well as bilateral ones to present the state of knowledge regarding their outcomes and effectiveness.

hybrid event