The destination of Pacific Island health professional graduates from a New Zealand university
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RESEARCH
Open Access
The destination of Pacific Island health professional graduates from a New Zealand university Shiva M Nair1, Prabal R Mishra2, Pauline T Norris3 and Charlotte Paul4*
Abstract Background: There is a shortage of health professionals in Pacific Island states and territories, and a need in New Zealand for Pacific health professionals to serve Pacific communities. Methods: A cross-sectional postal survey was conducted to investigate retention of Pacific graduates. All graduates of Pacific ethnicity or nationality from the University of Otago in the years 1994 to 2004 in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, physiotherapy and medical laboratory science were included. Results: The response rate was 59% (75 out of 128). Only 7% of respondents were working in the Pacific Islands (12% of non-residents and 4% of New Zealand residents), though the proportion in the whole cohort could be up to 20%. One third intended to work in Pacific communities in New Zealand or the Pacific Islands in the future. Factors that would favour such an intention were an adequate income, job availability, and good working conditions. Conclusions: Retention of graduates in the Pacific Islands is poor and measures to improve retention are needed. Keywords: Developing country, Health professional, Migration, Pacific Islands, Workforce
Background The globalisation of the labour market has exacerbated the health worker shortage in developing countries, as workers trained in those countries, or at their expense, are attracted to work in richer countries [1]. In the Pacific, the migration of Pacific Island health workers to New Zealand and Australia and beyond has been referred to as a “brain drain” [2]. Recent estimates of the health workforce in Pacific Island states and territories demonstrate how critical the shortages are in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and midwifery [3,4]. For instance, most Pacific states have only around one to five doctors per 10 000 population; in comparison, New Zealand has 29 doctors per 10 000 population [3,4]. The level of infrastructure development and health-care expenditure varies among the 13 Island states, but among those states are Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, the Republic of Vanuatu, Kiribati and the Independent State of Samoa, all of which have been listed among the least developed countries in the world [5]. * Correspondence: [email protected] 4 Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago, PO Box 913, Dunedin, New Zealand Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Through years of migration, a substantial Pacific Island community has evolved in New Zealand, making up 6.4% of the population, of whom 60% were born in New Zealand [6]. Most identify their heritage from the Cook Islands, Samoa, the Kingdom of Tonga and the Republic of Niue. Pacific residents in New Zealand have a worse health status than the total population [7], and increasing the Pacific health workforce is one of the ways of overcoming potential cultural and language b
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