Doctors' and Nurses' Flight, Patients' Plight: The Catch-22 of Health Care in Developing Countries

I first became interested in this topic after attending an AIDS awareness workshop focusing on South Asia and a lecture given by a nursing professor who had just returned from Botswana. Although these two events dealt with different geographic areas, the problem of brain drain underlay both of them. Inspired by Paul Farmer's belief that health care is a human right, and driven by my own curiosity and interest in international development and global health, I began to dig more deeply into the problem. After further research, I realized how extensive and multi-faceted the brain drain phenomenon is, and I decided to conduct an independent research project that I hoped would complement the existing studies by identifying and exploring some of the issues associated with it that have not yet been thoroughly examined. Upon the suggestion and encouragement of Dr. Renee Fox (my wonderful faculty adviser), I drafted a proposal to undertake a qualitative inquiry that would examine the brain drain process through face-to-face interviews with a small, but intensive sample of physicians and nurses who had migrated to the United States from so-called developing countries.