Rotunda master: Quality of doctors ‘dumbed-down’

The quality of doctors taking up posts in the Irish health service has deteriorated because there are few incentives to attract the highly trained, while workloads are so onerous that there is little scope to utilise expertise acquired abroad.

That’s according to the outgoing Master of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, Dr Sam Coulter Smith, who said the situation has worsened in the past two years.

“We are not seeing the same numbers and quality of people. I think we are getting some good people coming back but there is not the same competition there might have been in years gone by. Generally speaking, the level has gone down a bit,” he said.