The trip cost 113k. That means the state would turn a relative profit if they managed to recruit anything more than 2 doctors that would otherwise have to come from a locum agency.

On a relatively nice rotation in a relatively small, relatively quiet Irish hospital new docs work a mandatory 60+ hours in the first weeks on the job.

Roughly once a week they’ll be handed a bleep or phone at 9 am and start a shift on call. They’ll hand it back at about lunchtime, call shift done and dusted, before heading home or back to their regular day to day work.

That’s lunchtime the next day.

Then they’ll start the fight with management to get paid for the hours they spent working, which potentially runs all the way through to gettin the IMO involved or a court order.

When the money comes through, it’s up to 40% less than just a few years ago.

After 12-15 years of jumping through hoops, changing job and hospital at regular intervals (3m to a year depending on location), they might possibly have gotten to a stage where they can compete for a consultant position.

Elsewhere in the world, docs do a normal working week. They get paid on time, for all hours worked. They get trained appropriately, reaching fully qualified status in as little as 4-8 years (an option only open to GPs in Ireland). Their employers respect them, treat them well, and don’t regularly abuse them in the press.

I can’t imagine why emigration is an attractive option.

I want to stay in Ireland when I graduate next year, but I’m 110k in debt so to afford myself any standard of living I’m off to oz! Half the hours, double the pay. There are situations in the hse when the doc on call is the lowest paid person on duty, it’s a joke.

They need to make working here more attractive to medical staff in general. They are being snapped up abroad and the number of times I have to deal with doctors and nurses with very little English or broken English is ridiculous. An important conversation that should take 1 minutes can end up taking 10 minutes with someone required to translate. Its not on.

Exhibit A:
“There is considerable cost to the State associated with educating our young doctors and the brain drain of Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors [or 'junior doctors'] going overseas to work is also costing us dearly.”

Exhibit B:
“Many newly-qualified doctors already complain about long working hours and poor pay – saying their working rosters regularly include mandatory on-call overtime for which they are not paid.”

So who’s getting a better deal? Sounds to me like trainees pay for their training in blood sweat and tears. Then they feck off when it’s expected to continue afterwards. Presumably those that stay, do so for the promise of 200k as a consultant + whatever they can earn privately on the side. Perhaps those at the top are taking too large a slice of the pie?

The government could pay the fees of the graduate entry students. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind working here for a few years if they had less debt to pay back!

I happened to be a patient in a hospital last year, my room was opposite some sort of surgeon’s office. One night there was two doctors, surgeons I assume as I didn’t see them, outside my room talking. One was telling the other how bad he felt he was being trained, he said he was getting no supervision, no training and was being overworked. He said he was certain he had accidently killed patients. This man wasn’t saying this as an off the cuff remark but from what I heard it was something that was causing him a great deal of trouble. His colleague agreed with him but felt there was nothing they could do. If they said anything that would be the end of their careers.
I remember thinking at the time, thank Christ I’m not in for a surgical problem, but if doctors are under this kind of pressure of course they’ll leave at the earliest chance, who wouldn’t?

I just completed my internship, & in less than a month I’ll be on the east coast of Australia.
The decision wasn’t straight forward, as I had to bend my choice of training scheme around getting the time off, but in my final 3 month job it became a no-brainer.

as urology intern my average day was 7.30 am until 7.30 pm (morning & evening rounds), with on call once a week (14 hour shift), adding up to a total of between 60-66 hours a week usually, which isn’t bad…. That is until u realise that we arent been paid for any ‘unrostered overtime’, meaning every minute before 9am and after 5pm is unpaid unless it’s the one evening a week when your scheduled to be on call.

The bottom line I’m getting at is that as intern you are thrown in at the deep end, totally unprepared, work longer hours than most people your age, get paid less than the phlebotomists and porters, are regularly stressed, rarely find time for healthy living & command very little respect sitting at the bottom of every ladder.
So when the opportunity to improve things by working abroad, (or even just travelling for the year as I plan on doing) comes along, it’s an easy decision. We’re so underpaid that I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the fact that the government payed for my degree. I still had to feed & house myself for 6 years at considerable personal expense

Doctors should be paid more. Minimum wage, unskilled or semi skilled workers, and people who live for free on the dole should be paid less. Taxes generally should be increased, services and quality of life should be increased, personal responsbility and education should be emphasised, lawyers should be shot, and we can all go home and live happy, healthy lives?

There should be a way to recoup the training costs of graduates who are trained here and subsidised by the state if over a certain period of time they do not contribute to our economy. (not only for medican)

Unless we know how many people were surveyed, the percentages presented are meaningless.

Six years of university, eleven years of training…two sets of exams (luckily I got them first time..most have repeated attempts), years of carting my family around the country and only finding out three months before hand where I was going…research filling my weekends and nights that I also try and split with my family…I love my job, or else I would not do the eighty, ninety, hundred hour weeks and the long weekends where I miss plans with my friends and family. But at the end of the training there isn’t a consultant job for me, so I am in Canada where I am still doing the things I love. As NCHDs in Ireland we were paid very well (only some places fight over weekend and on call pay) but we worked incredibly hard. We also received excellent training and are considered highly skilled over here. All these comments are about the negative aspects of the job. There are a lot of positives about working in Ireland, most of them the other staff you get to work with and the patients…I would come back if there is a way to continue to support my family by working in an interesting and fulfilling job.

http://www.colmburke.eu/cms1/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CBurke-Survey-Med-Students-Survey-Booklet-NO-PR2.pdf