| The major purposes of this dissertation were: (a) to identify and analyze the circumstances and factors that offset the benefits for people that could be derived from having an increasing number of physicians and, (b) to provide information useful to policy-makers, planners, administrators and educators concerned with the tasks of improving the health of Colombians and training the required physicians to respond to the actual and future health needs of the Colombian population.;The information on which this study was based was obtained from: (a) interviews held with a selective sample of professionals fully familiar with different aspects of the phenomenon, at the national and regional levels. This sample was made of 107 professionals connected to medical schools, to the two largest institutions providing health services, and to planning, policy making and administrative activities in the health and educational sectors. (b) A second source of information was the extensive statistical data, documents and studies existing on these topics. Some statistics were obtained from publications and files made available by several public and private institutions; other was especially produced or treated for this study. Also newspapers became a valuable source of information.;Finally, it must be indicated that this study forms part of a series of studies dealing with the training and emigration of highly trained manpower from Colombia, undertaken and funded by the Colombian Fund for Scientific Research - COLCIENCIAS.;Study Results. The study traces the enormous expansion of higher education in Colombia; and traces the expansion of several key fields, among them Medicine, which have expanded even more rapidly than general university enrollments. Analysis also points up the recent, vigorous growth of private, for-profit, medical schools which cater to middle class families which can afford the charges and fees for study. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI;Some of the factors analyzed are directly related to features of the overall educational system and of the university level in particular; others are connected to features of the health market. Health institutions and other agencies delivering health services play an important role in this labor question. Both the features of the educational and health systems and the labor market provide an initial explanation of the subject being studied; but rather than defects existing in those sectors, they are features of the socio-economic and political structure of the Colombian society. |
