The Haemorrhage of Health Professionals from South Africa

This paper reports the results of a survey of health professionals in South Africa conducted in 2005-6 by the Southern African Migratory Project (SAMP). Since there is no single reliable database for all practicing health professionals, SAMP used the 29,000 strong database of MEDpages. All those on the list were invited by email to complete an online survey. About 5% of the professionals went to the website and completed the questionnaire; some requested hard copies or electronic copies of the questionnaire which they completed and returned. Although the sample is biased towards professionals who have Internet access and those who were willing to complete an online questionnaire, the sample represents a good cross-section (though not necessarily statistically representative sample) of South African health professionals and offers insights into their attitudes and opinions about emigration and other topics. In partnership with the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA), SAMP also distributed the survey manually to a sample of nurses and received an additional 178 responses.