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Wednesday, 21 May 2014 - 10:01
Brain drain: new doctors leaving NL for jobs elsewhere
Young medical specialists are more often opting to practice abroad because they have a hard time finding a job in the Netherlands after completing their study. This is according to research from De Jonge Specialist (The Young Specialist), the organization for medical specialists in training, the NOS reports.
Of all young doctors, five percent departed for abroad this year. Last year, this was only about one percent. Doctors have to keep practicing their profession in order to keep their registration, and studying to become a medical specialist costs around €1 million.
Around five percent of the 3,000 new doctors is jobless in the Netherlands, this is not including the five percent that went abroad. This unemployment rate is not as bad as last year. Two percent of the specialists chose a different line of work upon completion of study.
There is a difference in the category of specialisms. Cardiologists and anesthesiologists experience a two percent unemployment rate, and also decide to leave the country less often than average. Young surgeons, however, are employed abroad twice more than average.
Geriatricians are all able to find a steady. Pulmonologists, however, are more often unemployed, with 1 percent, and work abroad very often. A quarter of young orthopedists are doing a different line of work.
The Order of Medical Specialists (OMS) believes it is a temporary problem. Agreements were made last year to try and make the demand for training positions match up to the availability. It may be years for the results of that to be noticeable, however. There is also a solution necessary to prevent specialists from having to move abroad to practice.
"We have educated them", says OMS-president Frank de Grave. "As Dutch society we have invested in them, we have good medical specialists, and subsequently we put them on the bench. Let us make sure that we bridge over those few years by collectively agreeing that those people can just keep working so they can keep registration as doctor."