The dynamics of professional commitment: Immigrant physicians from the former Soviet Union in Israel

Judith T. Shuval and Judith Bernstein

Social Science & Medicine, 1996, vol. 42, issue 7, 965-974

Abstract: The paper examines professional commitment among physicians who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union during the early 1990s. This population faces severe limits regarding occupational continuity because of the highly saturated market in which non-negligible groups will, in the long run, of necessity undergo occupational change. The theoretical background for the analysis is drawn from the literature regarding recent changes in professional roles with particular reference to the shifting meaning of work in post-modern societies and its consequences for occupational commitment. The professional context of medical practice in the former Soviet Union and the social and economic constraints of Israeli society in the 1990s set the scene for the analysis. Several dimensions of professional commitment are examined empirically, on the assumption that there are a variety of ways to consider the notion of commitment and that no one measure tells a complete story. Prolonged processes of depressionalization of medicine in the Soviet Union, suggest that medicine for most immigrant physicians is not so much a 'calling' to which they are devoted; rather it is a necessary means to gain a livelihood, the only occupation for which they have been trained for many years after stringent selection to medical school and the only job in which they have worked consistently since completing their formal training. Two and a half years after arrival in Israel the immigrant doctors are characterized by a short-range time perspective which makes them unwilling to accept the constraints of the saturated market; intense efforts are made by most to obtain a license despite the fact that only a fraction of them will be able to work in their profession on a regular basis. Despite this over-riding reality, many hope that they will be among the selected few who will be able to obtain a medical post.

Keywords: immigrants; physicians; Israel; Soviet; Union; commitment; profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(95)00202-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:42:y:1996:i:7:p:965-974

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().