Follow-up study of male Liverpool graduates.

An attempt was made to trace all the male Medical Graduates from Liverpool University in the years 1950-1954 inclusive, in order to find out where they were working and what work they were doing 20 years later. Of the original group of 288 Graduates, 272 (94.4%) were both traceable and practising medicine. Of these 272, 15.1% were found to be working abroad and 84.9% working in the U.K. (51.5% in the North West and 33.5% elsewhere in the British Isles). Of those abroad (forty-one in number), about one third were in Canada, a further one third in Australia or New Zealand and about one quarter in the U.S.A.--these three areas accounting for 92.6% of all those abroad. The mean time of emigration was 9.6 years after graduation, with over two thirds emigrating between 5 and 14 years after graduation. Of those in the U.K. (231 in number), the majority were in General Practice (50.6%) and a further 32.1% had specialized in Hospital or Academic Medicine. These figures should be treated as orders of magnitude, since there are a number of possible sources of minor error.