NUIG study finds 9 in 10 medical students may leave Ireland on qualifying

Pishoy Gouda, a final year medical student at NUI Galway, was the principal investigator of this study.

Nine out of 10 medical students plan to leave or are “contemplating” leaving Ireland when they qualify, a new study involving the State’s six training schools has found.

Read article here:  Ireland's medical brain drain: migration intentions of Irish medical students

Career opportunities, working conditions and lifestyle are cited as the top three factors for migration by some 88 per cent of over 2,000 students surveyed.

The study led by NUI Galway (NUIG) and published on Thursday has found pay was not a key issue among the respondents.

The Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association had said highly trained doctors are being “driven out”.

The study’s supervisor, NUIG senior lecturer in social and preventive medicine Dr Diarmuid O’Donovan, has called for action to retain medical graduates and attract back those who have already emigrated.

Staff at HSE West’s public health department and at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, University of Limerick, University College Cork, University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin were involved with NUIG in the study, published in the open access journal Human Resources for Health.

  

Some 1,519 of the 2,000-plus medical students surveyed were Irish, and some 85 per cent of the total identified career opportunities as a determining factor in going abroad. Some 83 per cent identified working conditions, and 80 per cent identified lifestyle as factors.

Some 34.3 per cent said they were “definitely” planning to migrate, and a further 53.3 per cent said they were contemplating it – a total of almost 88 per cent.

Final-year NUIG medical student Pishoy Gouda, the principal investigator, said previous studies on this theme had focused on graduates, whereas this analysis involved junior, intermediate and senior students in the six medical schools.

“We found the outcome alarming, as it shows that even pre-med and first-year students are thinking about leaving already,” he said. It reflected a “widespread culture of intention to migrate” in the medical schools.

view full article on Irish Times here