Medical Practitioners' Reasons for Practice in Great Gity(Taegu)

개원의의 대도시 개원 이유 : 대구시 개원의를 중심으로

During the month of October, 1990, 676 practicing physicians in Taegu City were surveyed by mail questionnaires about their general characteristics and the reasons why they chose Taegu as a practice location and 331 out of them responded completely. Collected data were analyzed to provide basic reference data for future health manpower policy which intends to solve the problem of geographical maldistribution of physicians, The major findings are as follows: For the question asking why Taegu area is favored, following lists are as the order of their magnitude of the reasons replied by more than 20% of the respondents: 1) Taegu is a foundation of life until now(81.3%) 2) Better educational environments are available for their offsprings(73.7%) 3) They can have intimate relationship with acquaintances or friends sharing same or similar interests(61.0%) 4) Due to characteristics of their specialty, metropolitan seems to fit better(52.0%), 5) They graduated from the medical school in Taegu(49.8%) 6) Never thought of selecting practice location in other area than Taegu without any specific reasons(45.9%) 7) Intelligent communications are available with other physicians(39.9%) 8) More opportunities to participate in social life, such as medical, or alumni association etc., can be given(33.2%) 9) No specific knowledge or relationships with other area are available(32.6%) 10) They finished internship or residency training in Taegu area(31.4%) 11) Facilitation of transferring patients including emergent patients can be obtained (30.8%) 12) Continuing medical educational programs are available(29.9%) 13) Sufficient medical demands are provided because of the large population(28.1%) 14) More chances to be grown up as a medical professionals can be achieved(25.7%) 15) More leizure time can be utilized for cultural activities(23.9%) 16) They had experiences to work in hospitals or facilities in Taegu area(23.3%) 17) Medical facilities of fellow physicians or alumni can be used(20.5%) In addition, 37% of female physicians answered that their spouse strongly influenced them to choose Taegu, and 33.3% of physicians with age of thirty replied that parents did so. Physicians of specialty in radiology, clinical pathology, anatomical pathology, and anesthesiology considered that patients from other hospitals and medical facilities would be referred often to them and that less competition seemed to be expected in their specialty (30.8%). In contrast, general practitioners anticipated that larger population would increase the medical demand(62.5%). 28.6% of medical practitioners who graduated medical schools in other are than Taegu and 22.0% of medical practitioners who were trained in hospitals of other area than Taegu were influenced to choose Taegu by their spouses. In consideration of above findings, we may conclude that long term and rational manpower policies should be implemented to solve the problem of geographical maldistribution of physicians as well as short term physician-inducing policies, and they have to be incorporated with equitable community development.