The recruitment, training, and distribution of physicians in Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia has developed a form of communism very different from that found in other communist nations, yet it has faced problems of health manpower distribution not unlike those existing in other countries, both communist and non-communist. Recruitment and training patterns are in some respects similar to those found in the United States: medical students tend to come from high-status, urban families and specialization has increased very dramatically over the past thirty years, in marked contrast to the pattern in the United States. Moreover, though there are continuing discrepancies in physician distribution among urban and rural communes and developed and underdeveloped republics and provinces, these differences are not widening as they have in the United States when similar regional units are observed. It is suggested that physician distribution has been controlled more effectively in Yugoslavia than in the United States, in large part because of the control over available positions exercised by health workers and representatives of social insurance and other institutions.