One-in-five Irish doctors quits health service, says report

Catherine Shanahan

Data from the Medical Education and Training (MET) group’s career tracking study suggests close to 19% of Irish medical school graduates who register with the Irish Medical Council (IMC) leave the profession in Ireland with no intention of returning.

The study examined 507 graduates from the five medical schools who graduated either in 1994 or in 1999. Graduates who returned to their own country with no intention of practicing in Ireland and those who never registered with the IMC were excluded.

Of those eligible 260 (51%) were in medical employment in Ireland.

Almost 6% quit medicine, with just 14% of these choosing careers related to medicine, according to a report in Medicine Weekly. A further 43% of graduates, who could have been practising in Ireland, were working abroad. Some of these are likely to return.

Dr Chris Luke, director of Postgraduate Medical Education at Cork University Hospital (CUH), said the Government needed “as a matter of urgency” to increase the number of Irish medical students.

He called for immediate implementation of the Government-commissioned Fottrell report. It recommends increasing the number of Irish students granted entry to medical school from 305 to 725 as well as capping the number of non-EU students at 25%.

“There are not enough Irish graduates coming out of medical school and those who are are either leaving in droves or opting for part-time work.”

Dr Luke said the points system was denying up to 2,000 young Irish people the chance to study medicine each year.

Of 2,252 Leaving Certificate students with medicine as their first CAO choice this year, just 305 are guaranteed places, while non-EU students take up 515, or 62%, of medical school places. Dr Roisín Healy, spokeswoman for lobby group Medical School Entry Ireland, said the MET statistics should be interpreted with caution; that every profession had a rate of attrition. She said the drop-out rate of medical students was the lowest of all faculties at 5%, compared to an average of 16% across all faculties.