Ethical norms of medical school students and the workforce migration

*Ferenc Horváth, András Terebessy, Vince Pongor, Pèter Balázs

Summary
Introduction. In the 21th century, cross-border migration of physicians has a deep impact on health services of central-eastern European nations in terms of human workforce management and public financing of care alike.
Aim. This study is concerning the medical school students’ views about working abroad based on their socioeconomic background and ethical values in the proto-professional period of training and education.
Material and methods. For exploring the future medical doctors’ views and fields of national intervention we performed a self--administered questionnaire based study among the 4th year medical school students (N = 1413) of the Semmelweis University Budapest with response rate of 86.1% in 2009-2012. Completing the usual socioeconomic and cultural background questions, we also endeavoured to clear the proto-professionally perceived ethical values of future medical doctors based on selected items of two internationally standard questionnaires.
Results. As a result, we confirmed that beyond financial interests cross-border migration is also influenced by ethical values and considerations.
Conclusions. Willingness of working abroad is influenced not only by the foreign country’s economic incentives but also by the students’ ethical norms as well. This shows clearly that the students are aware of their social responsibility after they graduate in the tuition free publicly funded higher education.

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