Abstract:

There is a global trend related to the migration of health professionals, particularly physicians, to the most densely populated and wealthier areas. In Portugal, the unequal distribution of medical professionals is justified by the fact that in the most favoured areas, there are more career opportunities, better infrastructures and equipment, better working conditions and supervision, more and better social facilities and better salary. The aim of this work was to identify professional reasons associated with the expectation of staying in the same workplace. It was selected a simple random sample of 594 physicians out of a total of 18,711 registered physicians in Northern Regional Section of the Order of Physicians (NRSOP), Portugal. Most physicians would like to stay in the same workplace due to: the prospect of training and working at the current location, the organizational level of the unit, the level of differentiation of the hospital/health centre, the availability to use the state-of-the-art medical and surgical technology, better rewards, the level of work differentiation in the unit, the possibility of reconciling public and private practice, good references of the current unit/working group, avoid unit/workgroup with bad references and the prospect of career progression. This study revealed that, for physicians, professional motivations/purposes have an influence on the expectations of staying or not in the same workplace. Therefore, the study recommends that policy makers should prioritize professional reasons when formulating and implementing measures to promote the fixing of medical professionals in order to achieve greater equity in access to health care.