"Worse than being married": the exodus of British doctors from the National Health Service to Canada, c. 1955-75.
Despite a sizeable literature on the evolution of health insurance in Britain and Canada, there is virtually no research on the transnational migration of physicians between these countries in the immediate postwar period. This article hopes to address this neglected subject. Three inter-related topics will be examined. First, the paper will summarize the debate over physician emigration from the National Health Service (NHS) in postwar Britain. It will demonstrate how British social scientists and politicians began to come to grips with a major demographic exodus of British-trained doctors in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Second, it will analyze the changing health human resource situation in 1960s Canada, which focused, for practical and cultural reasons, on General Medical Council of Britain licensed practitioners. Third, through oral interviews of British-trained physicians who settled in Canada during the 1960s, it will examine the professional and personal reasons why physicians left Britain for Canada. It reveals that, among a myriad of personal issues that motivated a physician to leave the NHS, the inflexibility and hierarchical nature of British medicine loomed very large. The paper will conclude by reflecting on the contemporary significance of this fascinating historical phenomenon.
Wright
David
D
Department of History, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. dwright@mcmaster.ca
Mullally
Sasha
S
Cordukes
Mary Colleen
MC
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002170:Canada; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000266:history; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000266:history*; D005550:Foreign Medical Graduates / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D010820:Physicians / Q000266:history* / Q000600:supply & distribution; D013222:State Medicine / Q000266:history*; D006113:United Kingdom