ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some issues of professional commitment during immigrant physicians' in Israel. It focuses on a longitudinal study concerning the processes and implications of occupational persistence and change among immigrant physicians to Israel from the former USSR. The most influx of immigrants to Israel began in 1989 when an unprecedented number of persons arrived from the former Soviet Union. Growing insecurity engendered by the new freedoms of perestroika and glasnost resulted in the migration of over 500,000 persons from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the period 1989-1994. In the case under consideration, the idiosyncratic characteristics of medical care in the former Soviet Union are viewed by the Israeli medical establishment with considerable reservation in terms of the quality of immigrant physicians' training and clinical experience. By mid 1994, more than 12,000 physicians had arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union, doubling the population of doctors in Israel.
