Health and Social Care workforce planning and ensuring a sufficient supply of suitably qualified healthcare professionals in Ireland is a top priority for the Government.
The table in Appendix 1 shows the number of students who enrolled to study medicine in Ireland across all years for each of the past ten years separately for undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The table in Appendix 2 shows the number of students who graduated from studying medicine in Ireland for each of the past ten years separately for undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Regarding the number of doctors who are studying each discipline of medicine in Ireland for each of the past ten years for postgraduate students, the table in Appendix 3 provides an overview of the number of doctors undertaking formal postgraduate training in Ireland for each of the past 10 years. For a specialty breakdown for basic and higher specialty training across each of these training years please refer the HSE National Doctors Training and Planning Office annual medical workforce reports available here www.hse.ie/eng/staff/leadership-education-development/met/ed/rep/.
Appendix 4 shows the number of doctors who have graduated each discipline of medicine 2016- 2022.
In relation to the number of doctors that are still working in Ireland five years, ten years, 20 years, 30 years and 40 years, HSE-NDTP have recently commenced a review of doctors who complete Internship in Ireland. Early provisional data shows that a high percentage of interns who graduate leave Ireland for at least one year. However, the data shows that 82% of interns who commenced one year intern training in July 2015 subsequently commenced a Basic Specialist Training (BST) or General Practice (GP) training programme in subsequent years (2016-2021). A small number of the 2015 group also remain in the Irish system either in service grade posts or employed within the Private Sector. Data used in this project is collected from the NDTP Doctors Integrated Management E-System (DIME), implemented in the 2015/2016 training year.
The Medical Council is the statutory agency responsible for the registration and regulation of doctors in Ireland. To protect patients, it has a responsibility to ensure that all doctors registered to practise medicine in Ireland meet the requirements to practise as set out in legislation. The Medical Council also plays a role in the supply of doctors through setting and monitoring standards and guidelines which all basic medical degree programmes, intern and specialist training programmes in Ireland are required to meet and has the role of assuring the quality of undergraduate education of doctors and quality of postgraduate training of specialists.
The Medical Council also supports workforce planning by the research projects it undertakes annually, such as the Medical Workforce Intelligence Report. This report provides a detailed analysis of the Medical Council’s registration data, focusing on demographics of those retaining and withdrawing from the medical register in Ireland. The Medical Workforce Intelligence Report is a central document in informing workforce planning and improved patient safety in Ireland.
In relation to the number of students who are still working in Ireland after they have graduated the Deputy may be aware that the CSO has developed a statistical framework known as the 'Educational Longitudinal Database' (ELD) in collaboration with Irish public sector bodies to examine learner outcomes. The ELD is produced by matching datasets on learners that have completed courses or programmes to other datasets which describe their outcomes in subsequent years. The data sources used to describe learner outcomes include employment and self-employment datasets from Revenue, benefits data from the Department of Social Protection, and data on educational participation from the Department of Education and several state agencies, including the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) and SOLAS. As part of the strategic workforce planning function in my Department, officials are exploring the potential of this database to examine the outcomes, including employment outcomes, for students of health and social care courses in Ireland.
Medical students
