Medical students: ‘No option but to emigrate’

The majority of medical students graduating this year want to stay working in Ireland but believe they will have little alternative than to move overseas, according to a survey.

The research, conducted by Fine Gael’s spokesman on health in the Seanad, Senator Colm Burke, showed that the medical brain drain is set to continue, with nearly two-thirds of final-year medical students (65.5%) not planning on working within the Irish hospital system one year after their graduation.

The anonymised survey was co-ordinated between all the third-level medical training facilities and received responses from 178 final-year students, just under one-third of all final-year graduates.