Dr. Tom Ryan:

Deputy Murphy O'Mahony also asked about the training period. Most young people, when they qualify as a doctor and finish their internship, need time to find their feet. They need time to consider what they want to do long term. It is generally at this point that doctors would do two years of general training, usually in medicine. They then enter some specialty training. Following the sub-specialty training, they go abroad to round off their professionalism and to gain more experience. A problem arises when in the two years before they get into specialist training they go abroad. When they finish their specialist training they will go abroad. Whereas the system here almost shuns junior doctors or doctors in training, when they go abroad they are embraced with open arms. If they want to do more work and treat more patients they are given access to the resources, staff and administrative support they need to do so. I know from direct personal experience of going abroad that when doctors go abroad they are treated very well. If one wants to treat more patients everyone is delighted and one is given immediate access to whatever one wants. There is no delay. Doctors from experience at home know that the system is not conducive to providing excellence, either clinical, academic or training. Young talented people see the disconnect between what is possible abroad and what pertains at home and they take a message from it. They are not valued at home but they are valued abroad and so they emigrate. We are exporting fully trained doctors to the rest of the world such that our health system is dependent on foreign-trained doctors. We import doctors from poorer countries. We take into our health care system doctors who have been trained in developing and Third World countries and as such we are not doing their countries of origin any justice. At the same time, we are exporting large numbers of fully trained, confident medical professionals to thrive and practice abroad.