The ethics of recruiting foreign trained doctors

A public health economist says it is immoral for Australia to continue recruiting doctors from developing nations without providing compensation.

Australia now has more overseas-trained doctors per capita than any other country.

In Western Australia, more than 50% of rural doctors are from overseas.

Gavin Mooney from Curtin University says Australia should be compensating the doctors’ home countries by funding public health management and governance.

“We need to find some way of compensating these countries for, in a sense, having stolen their doctors and nurses, who they have trained,” he said.

“It’s not just they have lost them in terms of their presence there to look after sick people in these countries, but also the fact these countries have spent a lot of money in training the doctors and nurses and we get the benefit of that.”