Where do family physicians practise after residency training? Flow of physicians from region to region across Canada.

OBJECTIVE: To understand the flow of family physicians from region to region across Canada. To discover how many leave a region after residency, how many stay, and how many flow into a region from other regions.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional study using descriptive statistics.
SETTING: Various regions across Canada. PARTICIPANTS: A weighted sample (N = 14,332) of all family physicians who completed the College of Family Physicians of Canada's 2001 National Family Physician Workforce Survey. This survey asked where physicians had done their family medicine residency. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The proportion of family physicians whose current region of practice was the same as their place of residency ("staying"), the proportion of family physicians who trained in one region and who now practise in a different region ("outflow"), the proportion of family physicians who practise in a region but were trained in another region ("inflow"), and the number of family physicians flowing in and out of regions.
RESULTS: Half of Canadian family physicians were practising in regions different from the regions where they did their residency programs. This percentage varied by region, however, with only Ontario's percentage resembling the Canadian figure. In the Atlantic and Prairie regions, few stayed (13.8% and 24.7%, respectively), but many flowed in. In Quebec, a high proportion stayed after residency training (81.6%). In British Columbia, only 23.7% stayed, but many flowed in.
CONCLUSION: This study provides information about the relationship between where family physicians did their residency programs and where they subsequently practised. Our results add important information to the health human resource literature.