7% of registered doctors did not practise last year

Almost 7% of the doctors registered with the Medical Council in 2012 had not practised medicine in the last 12 months, and of those who had, 15% practised outside Ireland and 14% worked part time.

According to the council’s Medical Workforce Intelligence Report, 16,392 doctors retained registration with it as of Jun 2012.

There was a 3% fall in the number of doctors registered at the end of that year compared with 2011.

Among its other findings were that:

- Around 60% of doctors registered were male and 40% were female;

- The female medical workforce was generally younger than the male medical workforce, with nearly 52% of female and nearly 40% of male doctors under the age of 40;

- 77.6% of doctors were aged between 25 and 54 years.

Roughly 35% of doctors working here in 2012 were qualified outside Ireland. That was cause for concern because the council found that doctors who qualified outside Ireland were more likely to exit the register.

Ireland’s level of medical practitioner density — a measure of the number of doctors per head of population — ranked 13th by end of year registration figures among the 28 OECD countries.

However, the council’s chief executive, Caroline Spillane, pointed out that despite the comparable level with OECD norms, “the report reveals that many doctors registered with the Medical Council are not fully active in the medical workforce as they are not in active practise, practising outside Ireland or are in less than full-time practice”.

In fact, 6.8% of the 16,392 doctors registered had not practised in the previous 12 months, 14.8% had worked outside Ireland for at least part of the year and 13.8% were working part time.

Ms Spillane also pointed to a relatively high proportion of young doctors exiting the register.

The report found that, for Irish medical school graduates, the lowest exit rates were observed in the 40-60 years bracket, where rates of exit were between 1.4% and 2.1%, compared with over 6% in other age cohorts.

“Relatively high exit rates were observed in recent Irish medical school graduates (6.4% for 25 to 29-year-olds and 6.3% for 30-34-year-olds),” it said.

They authors of the report warned that the increased number of female doctors registered in recent years needed to be considered.

“In the next few years many of the current cohort of women under the age of 35 will be moving into age ranges where, if current patterns of age-specific exit rates and part-time working continue, their participation in the medical workforce will change.

“Healthcare planners should take cognisance of the likely impact on service provision which may arise from possible changes in work patterns across the professional lives of this significant section of the workforce.”