Search

Introduction: Combining a successful career with family planning has become increasingly important in recent years. However, maintaining a relationship, deciding upon the optimal time for pregnancy and other family planning decisions can still be quite challenging, especially for junior doctors whose training is long and demanding. Currently, women form an important part of the medical workforce, and there is noticeable feminization in migration. However, little is known about the personal characteristics of junior doctors in Europe and how these play a role in their decision to migrate.Methods: Survey of psychiatric trainees in 33 European countries, exploring how personal characteristics, such as gender, relationship status and parenthood, impact their attitudes toward migration.Results: 2,281 psychiatric trainees in Europe took part in the study. In this sample, the majority of psychiatric trainees were in a relationship, but only one quarter had children, although there were variations across Europe. Both men and women indicated personal reasons as their top reason to stay. However, women ranked personal reasons as the top reason to leave, and men financial reasons. Single woman were the most likely of all subgroups to choose academic reasons as their top reason to leave. Interestingly, when women were in a relationship or had children, their attitudes toward migration changed.Conclusions: In this study, a low number of psychiatric trainees in Europe had children, with differences across Europe. These findings raise awareness as to the role of parental conditions, which may be favoring or discouraging parenthood in junior doctors in different countries.

Food can change various physiological parameters along the gastrointestinal tract, potentially impacting postprandial drug absorption. It is thus important to consider different in vivo conditions during in vitro studies. Therefore, a novel dissolution medium simulating variable postprandial pH values and lipid concentrations was developed and used in this study. Additionally, by establishing and validating a suitable analytical method, the effects of these parameters on the dissolution of a model drug, cinnarizine, and on its distribution between the lipid and aqueous phases of the medium were studied. Both parameters, pH value and lipid concentration, were shown to influence cinnarizine behavior in the in vitro dissolution studies. The amount of dissolved drug decreased with increasing pH due to cinnarizine’s decreasing solubility. At pH values 5 and 7, the higher concentration of lipids in the medium increased drug dissolution, and most of the dissolved drug was distributed in the lipid phase. In all media with a lower pH of 3, dissolution was fast and complete, with a significant amount of drug distributed in the lipid phase. These results are in accordance with the in vivo observed positive food effect on cinnarizine bioavailability described in the literature. The developed medium, with its ability to easily adjust the pH level and lipid concentration, thus offers a promising tool for assessing the effect of co-ingested food on the dissolution kinetics of poorly soluble drugs.