Ireland may host majority of overseas doctors

As reported by the Irish Times, Ireland is the country most likely to host the largest number of medical professionals in the industrialised world trained overseas, according to a new study. In 2008, Ireland was second to New Zealand in the OECD in regards to the amount of doctors and nurses trained overseas.

Ireland is likely to have taken first place after a series of recruitment initiatives since then, according to the study executed by Trinity College Dublin and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2010, which is the last year for which data are available, over a third (33.4%) of all registered nurses and doctors in Ireland were medical graduates who were non-Irish.

In 2000 the figure stood at 13.4%, while in 2011, the HSE recruited around 300 Pakistani and Indian doctors. The amount of non-EU instructed doctors increased in 2000 from 972 to a whopping 4,740 in 2010, making up a quarter of all registered doctors in Ireland.

The data also reveal that the amount of nurses recruited from abroad between 2000 and 2010, (14,546), corresponded to the number of Irish trained nurses (17,264) who had joined the health services. Since the financial crisis started, as many as 4,202 non-EU nurses have tried to flee the Irish health service.

The data will pose questions surrounding the efficacy of recruitment procedures within the health service while thousands of Irish-trained medics are forced to migrate overseas to carry on with their training.