摘要：In general, a country’s human capital represents one of its most valuable
assets. This issue becomes all the more signifi cant, when considering that highly
qualifi ed and expert staff is hard to fi nd, particularly in certain under-resourced
areas, such as mental health care. A current trend, worldwide, involves medical professionals that are becoming increasingly mobile, pursuing jobs that can off er
the utmost, in terms of income and overall quality of life. The present study aims
to highlight the magnitude of the brain drain of Romanian psychiatrists and to shed
light on some of the reasons behind it. The study was developed by the European
Federation of Psychiatric Trainees and was carried out during 2013-2014, as part
of the international Brain Drain study. The only inclusion criterion was being a
psychiatric trainee that had to be enrolled in a national training program, at the
time. This paper aimed to analyze the available data about demographics, past
experiences of short-term mobility, long-term migration and attitudes towards
migration of psychiatric trainees, by means of a semi-structured, 61-item, selfreport
survey. The results showed that a signifi cant percentage of the Romanian
psychiatric trainees were dissatisfi ed with their income. The majority of the 14%
of psychiatric trainees, who had previous experiences of mobility, had done so
by traveling to high-income European countries, thus making the probability of
working in another country, 5 years from now, seem higher, due to the multitude
of economic and social advantages associated with such an environment. Half
of all the respondents answered in favor of working in another state, while more
than a third made actual practical steps towards achieving this. Additionally, it
was noted that the more practical the steps they took, the more likely they were
to migrate in the future.
