Ireland tops foreign-born medics list

IRELAND has the highest percentage rate of foreign nurses and doctors in Europe, with more than one in every three of our health workers originally coming from another country.

New figures revealed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) show 47% of all types of nurses and 35% of all grades of doctors working in Ireland have come from another jurisdiction.

The details are compiled in the extensive 597-page Health Professional Mobility and Health Systems report, which examined dependency rates between 2004 and 2009 and has been published in recent days.

The document indicates that while these professionals are providing a vital service, the number employed in Ireland is inadvertently contributing to a wave of Ireland-educated graduates emigrating to find work abroad.

The WHO figures compared reliance on foreign health workers in 18 European and non-European OECD nations, and show Ireland has the highest and third highest dependency on foreign medics of any country examined.

The study shows that Ireland, Britain and Austria are the only EU nations with a “high or very high” dependency on nurses from abroad.

While this category ranges from 10% upwards, the Irish rate is 47.1%.

By comparison, the study noted a “negligible” dependency in Turkey and Slovakia, a “relatively low” rate (less than 5%) in Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Spain and Sweden, and a “medium” dependency of 5%-10% in Italy.

Of the wider OECD group, the highest dependency rate was in New Zealand, which at 22% is still less than half that of Ireland.

Similar differences are also apparent for doctors, with the Irish health service again considered to be among the most dependent on employees who are originally from abroad.

Within this group, Ireland is placed in the “very high dependency” bracket alongside Britain, Switzerland and Slovenia, with our 35% rate marginally behind the largest EU rate, in Britain, of 36.8%.

This compares to a “low” rate of less than 5% in France, Italy and Hungary; a “moderate” rate of 5.2%-6.2% in Finland and Germany; and “high” rate of between 11.1% and 18.4% in Austria, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and Norway.

The highest level in OECD countries was again in New Zealand where, at the time of the study’s research, almost 45% of doctors were foreign-born.

The study said there is a clear east-west divide in terms of where doctors and nurses are choosing to emigrate and, as expected, the highest dependency rates can be found in richer countries in western Europe instead of those in the east.

It also shows that Ireland is an “extreme” case of a country whose health service has a significant level of workers from abroad. [e-mail]