Attitude toward migrate abroad in Iranian medical community: a qualitative study

Intellectual and human capital is one of the main foundations of the countries' growth and development, and the lack of such capital makes development process difficult. The migration of specialists and scientists and its trend as elite migration, especially the migration of physicians, is one of the problems that has plagued the scientific management policy of many countries around the world. This migration within the medical community can have different consequences for the structure of the medical services in any country. Iran has also recently faced with migration of the medical elite. Therefore, this article aimed at explaining the tendency to migrate abroad in the medical community. This qualitative-descriptive study was conducted through the participation of 33 physicians and paramedics who were planning to migrate abroad, or have recently immigrated to another country and had a desire to participate in the study. Purposeful and theoretical sampling was used during the semi-structured interviews for collecting data. Data were analyzed using conventional inductive content analysis and coding by using Atlas.ti8 software. In order to explain the tendency for migration, the qualitative findings showed that the interview codes were composed of two main categories of destination attractions and origin repulsions. Data analysis led to the extraction of two main categories: 1) Origin repulsions including 5 subcategories of economic-occupational factors, socio-cultural factors, political-religious factors, educational factors, and personal factors and 2) Destination attractions including 5 sub-categories of legality and relationships, security, welfare-financial conditions , and educational and  job opportunities. The results indicated that physicians and paramedics have tended to migrate due to repulsion issues and high attractions in the destination country. Health and medical policy-makers are expected to develop transparent programs and laws to prevent and manage the migration process of medical professionals, to manage and remove barriers to medical community persistence and to enhance attractions.