A Study of Factors Influencing Brain Drain among Medical Personnel in Nigeria.

Abstract

The economic depression of the late 80's has made work force groups particularly in the medical industry to look beyond their nose and seek for greener pasture somewhere outside their environ at all cost. This economic situation deeply affected the medical groups that migration became the chorus of the medical personnel. This perennial situation made the study to examine the factors influencing brain drain among the medical personnel in Nigeria, using a selected University Teaching Hospital Complex as a case study. A protested 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was administered to 85 randomly and purposively selected medical personnel, to ferret the causes of immigration and the corresponding effect on the provision of medical services and development of future medical personnel in the country. The survey made use of both historical and descriptive research methods. The survey was based on the light of high skilled personnel popularly referred to as brain drain. The data gathered through the questionnaire were subjected to simple descriptive statistical analysis. The results were ranked in the order of importance. The result showed that migration decision is mainly caused by the conditions within the organization rather than the pull factors. The motivation of workers is at very low level, with ability to meet the physiological needs rated first with 30.6 percent of the respondents strongly agreed to this concept. The effect of brain drain was also significant on the provision of medical services, training and development of future medical personnel. The result depicted that the push factors are the most important influences in the decision to migrate than the pull factors. The survey revealed that desire for better life could be counted as the most important factor for searching for greener pasture (75.0 percent) considering pull factors; better working condition was considered as the very important reason for migration (87.0 percent) migration. The migration of medical personnel would endanger the development of future medical personnel. It was concluded that desire for better life is the most important factor as the basis for the migration decisions, and certainly brain drain is the fall-out of economic depression. If this syndrome is not addressed promptly it will continue to hinder the development and delivery of medical services in this country.

KEY WORDS: Strategy, Economic, Marketing, Needs, Push, Pull