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Ireland faces shortage of doctors as applications from outside the EU fall

Doug Payne Dublin

There is a growing shortage of doctors from outside the European Union in the Republic of Ireland. Doctors’ leaders attribute the situation to the introduction just over three years ago of stricter assessment exams, which include proficiency in English.

A number of senior doctors are warning that the situation is now so critical that some hospital departments may possibly collapse this summer.

When the new system was put in place in December 1996, there were more than 1000 applications a year for temporary registration from doctors outside the European Union. The number has plummeted, and when the first exam was to be held it had to be postponed because only four applications had been received. Although the numbers have risen somewhat, there are still fewer than 100 applicants a year.

Late last month, Mr Colman O’Leary, the chairman of the Accident and Emergency Consultants Association, told the Irish Medical Times that applications had dropped by 90% from suitable non-consultant hospital doctors seeking work in accident and emergency departments beginning in July this year.

Another accident and emergency consultant told the same publication that he had short listed 15 non-consultant hospital doctors for seven posts and not one turned up for an interview. Asian graduates, for example, must arrange their visas and travel to Dublin at their own expense to sit the proficiency exam.

The same graduates are able to sit the registration exams for the United Kingdom in their own countries. Even junior doctors from within the European Union face delays and expenses. They must pay £Ir 400 (£308; $490) to the Medical Council to have their qualifications checked, a process that can take weeks or even months. One German doctor who arrived in the republic in January was still not working last month.

Ironically, the Republic of Ireland, with a population of less than 4 million, has five medical schools. Much of the money to run the schools comes from well to do foreign students, who return home when they qualify.

Many of the Irish graduates, unable to work as consultants in the republic, also go elsewhere, many to the United Kingdom. Anthony Clare, professor at Trinity College Dublin, recently told an Irish Sunday newspaper that many foreign doctors who come to Ireland for postgraduate training get a poor deal.

"Many end up occupying posts in rural hospitals that Irish doctors refuse to take because the actual training provided is minimal. [But] without these hardworking and exploited doctors, the healthcare system in one of the richest countries in the world would collapse."

Dr Mick Molloy, leader of the non-consultant hospital doctors group, agrees. He has argued for some time that the Department of Health and health service managers bear much of the blame. "They are going to have to do what they are supposed to do and that is to manage."

There were, he said, 400 Irish graduates coming out of Irish medical schools every year "but they are not being kept in the system."

Ireland suffers from a shortage of doctors that is near critical, and figures from elsewhere in Europe indicate that both Norway and Sweden are equally short of doctors as is France. Media reports in Norway last week indicated that there was a shortage of more than 5000 doctors. Yet in Germany, jobless figures from the government show that more than 8000 doctors are unemployed.
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