Gone for good? An online survey of emigrant health professionals using Facebook as a recruitment tool

摘要

BackgroundHealth professionals, particularly doctors, nurses and midwives, are in high demand worldwide. Therefore, it is important to assess the future plans and likelihood of return of emigrating health professionals. Nevertheless, health professionals are, by definition, a difficult population to track/survey. This exploratory study reports on the migration intentions of a sample of doctors, nurses and midwives who had emigrated from Ireland, a high-income country which has experienced particularly high outward and inward migration of health professionals since the year 2000.