Abstract
Background Ethiopia is a developing country with serious shortages of health personnel and is one of the countries with the lowest physician density in the world. It is also one of the countries with the highest physician emigration in sub-Saharan Africa. This study was carried out to investigate attitudes among medicine students to understand why this situation of migration of doctors continues. Methods An anonymous survey was distributed to 117 last year students of medicine at Jimma University and St Paul s Millennium Medical College in Addis Ababa regarding their attitudes towards studying medicine, future career and migration. The results were plotted in and analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Findings Career possibilities and high salary were important both when choosing to study medicine and when choosing where to work. 59,4 % answered it to be likely or very likely that they work abroad in 5 years, and as much as 73,4 % in 10 years. Factors related to staying with statistical relevance in this study were helping the community as a motivation to study medicine, young age, and good relations to their supervisors. The majority of students preferred working in a hospital rather than in primary health care, and about75 % of the students were likely to work in private sector. Conclusion This study shows that the thoughts of leaving the country are there already as students of medicine. Motivations before studying medicine and experiences during studies are important to future career choices, and improvements here could to some extent prevent emigration. In addition, local improvements of sufficient dimensions should be made, and the ones of most importance in this study seem to be higher salaries and future career possibilities.