A high number of psychiatric trainees considered moving to another country, and their motivation largely reflects the substantial salary differences. These findings suggest tackling financial conditions and academic opportunities.

Introduction: Combining a successful career with family planning has become increasingly important in recent years. However, maintaining a relationship, deciding upon the optimal time for pregnancy and other family planning decisions can still be quite challenging, especially for junior doctors whose training is long and demanding. Currently, women form an important part of the medical workforce, and there is noticeable feminization in migration. However, little is known about the personal characteristics of junior doctors in Europe and how these play a role in their decision to migrate. Methods: Survey of psychiatric trainees in 33 European countries, exploring how personal characteristics, such as gender, relationship status and parenthood, impact their attitudes toward migration. Results: 2,281 psychiatric trainees in Europe took part in the study. In this sample, the majority of psychiatric trainees were in a relationship, but only one quarter had children, although there were variations across Europe. Both men and women indicated personal reasons as their top reason to stay. However, women ranked personal reasons as the top reason to leave, and men financial reasons. Single woman were the most likely of all subgroups to choose academic reasons as their top reason to leave. Interestingly, when women were in a relationship or had children, their attitudes toward migration changed. Conclusions: In this study, a low number of psychiatric trainees in Europe had children, with differences across Europe. These findings raise awareness as to the role of parental conditions, which may be favoring or discouraging parenthood in junior doctors in different countries.

IntroductionMigration of mental health professionals is an important phenomenon influencing mental health services of host and donor countries. Data on medical migration in Europe is very limited, particularly in the field of young doctors and psychiatry. To research this hot topic, the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) conducted the EFPT Brain Drain Survey.ObjectivesTo identify the impact of previous short-term mobility on international migration and to understand characteristics, patterns and reasons of migration.MethodsIn this cross-sectional European multicentre study, data were collected from 2281 psychiatric trainees across 33 countries. All participants answered to the EFPT Brain Drain Survey reporting their attitudes and experiences on migration.ResultsTwo-thirds of the trainees had not had a short-mobility experience in their lifetime, but those that went abroad were satisfied with their experiences, reporting that these influenced their attitude towards migration positively. However, the majority of the trainees had not had a migratory experience of more than 1 year. Flows showed that Switzerland and United Kingdom have the greatest number of immigrant trainees, whereas Germany and Greece have the greatest number of trainees leaving. ‘'Pull factors'’ were mostly academic and personal reasons, whereas ‘'push factors'’ were mainly: academic and financial reasons. Trainees that wanted to leave the country were significantly more dissatisfied with their income.ConclusionsThe majority of the trainees has considered leaving the country they currently lived in, but a lower percentage has taken steps towards migration.

IntroductionIn general, monotherapy is advocated. However, a proportion of the treatment regimens contains two or more drugs from the same class (i.e. polypharmacy) or a combination of drugs from different classes.ObjectivesTo investigate the prevalence of prescription patterns of psychotropic drugs to our outpatients with schizophrenia, unipolar depression or bipolar disorder.MethodsFiles of 510 outpatients were studied. A retrograde examination was done spanning for 6 months. Demographics, details of diagnosis, hospitalizations and a chart of the drugs administered were collected. A comparison was done between various characteristics of patients under polypharmacy and monotherapy.ResultsPolypharmacy as well as combination therapy was more prevalent than monotherapy in all groups. Patients with a history of previous hospitalizations were not prone to be under polypharmacy, excluding depressives . Antidepressant prescription in schizophrenics was unusually high reflecting the easiness of use of new agents for negative symptomatology . The most commonly prescribed antipsychotics were quetiapine, olanzapine and risperidone. Classical antipsychotics had medium proportion of the treatment, mainly as combined therapy. Mirtazapine, Venlafaxine and Sertraline were the most commonly prescribed antidepressants Tricyclics were prescribed alsoConclusions.. Greek clinicians' attitude for polypharmacy, regardless of the diagnosis, is prevalent. The recent changes in reimbursement policies of the healthcare System in Greece, did little to affect antipsychotics, but had an effect in the prescribing patterns of antidepressants

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