By Elie A Akl1237, Nancy Maroun4, Aline Rahbany5 and Amy Hagopian6
BackgroundLebanon has witnessed a rapid expansion of its medical education capacity with the establishment of three new private medical schools since 2000 for a total of seven
schools (Additional file 1). The two oldest medical schools were established respectively in 1868 and 1883.
While no formal accreditation system of medical schools currently exists, there are ongoing efforts to create one.
All schools are university-based and these universities make all academic decisions connected to the degree course. The demand for physicians from higher-income
countries, especially Gulf countries, the U.K., Canada, the U.S. and Australia, has likely fuelled the growth in private medical schools in many low-income countries,
including Lebanon.
The substantially increased numbers of medical school graduates in Lebanon might have contributed to the significant increase in physician emigration reported in the
mid 2000’s [1]. In 2004, about 40% of those who graduated from Lebanese medical schools in previous 25 years were active physicians in the US [2].
A recent survey of students graduating from Lebanese medical schools found 96% of respondents intended to work abroad, [3]
in large part because of a perceived oversaturation of the local physician job market [4]. While no study has formally documented such oversaturation or assessed the distribution of Lebanese physicians, in 2007 there were 10,918 registered physicians (physician density of 2.73 per 1000) [5]. In 2009, 72% of Lebanese physicians reported practicing primarily in urban settings [5].
Other developing countries have also witnessed a worsening migration of their physician to developed countries [1].
Read more :An emigration versus a globalization perspective of the Lebanese physician workforce: a qualitative study.
Authors:
Elie A Akl1237, Nancy Maroun4, Aline Rahbany5 and Amy Hagopian6
*Corresponding author: Elie A Akl [email protected]
1Department of Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
2Department of Family Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
3Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
4Department of Sociology, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY, USA
5Independent researcher, Beirut, Lebanon
6School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
7Department of Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, ECMC-CC 142, 462 Grider St., Buffalo, NY, 14215, USA