home or abroad? exploring medical students’ attitudes towards studying and working overseas

Background & objective: cross-border medical student mobility and doctor migration have become global trends. the aim of this study was to explore malaysian medical students’ attitudes towards studying and working overseas. materials & methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted among medical students of the academic year 2018–2019 from university kuala lumpur, royal college of medicine perak, using a self-administered validated questionnaire that explored their opinions related to encouraging and deterring factors of studying and working overseas and their preferred destination for migration. all 569 students from years 1 to 5 were invited, and 505 completed responses were analyzed.results: financial factors were rated as most relevant for not studying overseas by 81.6% of the respondents, whereas language barriers and racial discrimination were considered less relevant. doing electives overseas was favored by 68.9%. regarding the benefits of further study abroad, learning international standards and experiencing diversity are rated as “very important” by 75.4% and 62.7%, respectively. they rated better earning (63.2%) and further learning (30.7%) as the most relevant reasons for doctors working overseas, and family commitment (49.9%), medical licensing examinations (mle) (38.4%), and loyalty to their home country (34.7%) for not working overseas.  their most preferred foreign destinations for further study and working are the uk, ireland, and australia.conclusion: while appreciating the advantages of further study abroad, mle was considered one of the deterring factors. as a result, consideration should be given to making changes to existing curricula to align with the expected standards of the destined countries.