IMO demands answers on medical internships

The Irish Medical Organisation has called for answers as to whether all the graduates offered internships this year will get jobs next year. The positions were announced by then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, addressing UCC medical graduates. Picture: A screenshot of Mr Varadkar announcing the new positions.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has called on the government to say whether or not graduates offered extra internships this year will get jobs next year.

The IMO claims none of the graduates who took up the posts have any idea if they will be offered training or a non-consultant hospital doctor job.

Leo Varadkar announced the extra medical internships in April at an online graduation ceremony at University College Cork (UCC).

The extra posts were, he said, being made available to help in the country’s fight against Covid-19.

As a result, an additional 300 medical intern posts were made available this year and 260 took up posts, starting work in May.

That brought to around 994 the total number of internships given to graduates this year.

“Mr Varadkar said some wonderful things to graduates in that online graduate ceremony at UCC,” Paul Maier, IMO industrial relations officer, said.

“It was a very moving speech - all about how important the graduates would be in such strange times and how much their efforts would help this country fight the pandemic.

“But with the extra interns created, we would have expected to have heard by now whether or not there will be actually anywhere for those extra interns to go.

Every year, there are usually around 700 training positions or NCHD posts.

“We have, however, not heard if there will be any extra positions to take into consideration the extra interns.

“We have asked various training bodies what the story is but they don’t know.

“Nobody knows, least of all the very people Mr Varadkar told were so important to this country’s efforts in the fight against Covid-19.” 

When Mr Varadkar announced the internships in April, he told 197 UCC medical college graduates they would have an important role to play in helping fight the pandemic.

“We need you to graduate and start work as interns early, because there’s so much work to be done,” he told them, via video-link.

Addressing the 71 international graduates, he said he hoped they’d stay in Ireland and build their careers here.

“I think, in the past, we haven’t been as fair to doctors from overseas as we might have been, and that’s something we want to change into the future,” he said.

And he said that if any of the 126 Irish graduates decided to go abroad, he said he hoped they would “come back in the aftermath of this crisis, seek to build a much better health service, one in which you’ll be proud to work”.

Each year, the HSE approves the number of training posts, at both basic specialist training (BST) and higher specialist training (HST) level, that are required by the health service for the subsequent training year.

A number of factors are included in the deliberations on the BST numbers.

These include workforce planning projection, health service policy, the size of the intern cohort from the previous year and the number of training places in HST. 

A HSE spokesperson said: “The HSE is currently working with all relevant stakeholders to agree on the July 2021/22 BST intake, taking into account all the factors listed above including the increase in intern numbers.

“Each year there are significantly more BST training places available than there are interns who take up these places.

“There will be an adequate number of BST training places in July 2021 for interns who are interviewed, and deemed suitable, and wish to take up a BST training place.”