HSE ‘encouraged’ by early reaction to overseas recruitment campaign for hospital consultants

The HSE says it remains optimistic about its current campaign to recruit some 400 hospital consultants despite figures showing just 110 have been hired since its new contract was introduced in March.

The organisation, which employs around 4,000 consultants but has roughly 900 vacancies, has been running social media and print campaigns targeting consultants working in a number of countries including the UK, Australia and United States.

The campaign highlights starting rates in Ireland of €214,000 compared to around €104,000 in the UK where a consultant with 19 years experience currently earns just under €141,000. The top of the scale in Ireland is €257,000. Relocation packages and other benefits are also being offered.

When the campaign was launched In June the HSE’s national director of HR, Anne Marie Hoey, said she it was intended the international aspect would make a substantial contribution towards the hiring of more than 400 consultants this year.

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Irish-trained doctors working abroad are a key constituency being targeted.

The campaign began on June 12th, and the HSE says there was a 31 per cent increase generally in the number of searches online for consultant roles in Ireland. with a 153 per cent increase in the UK between that date and July 31st.

However, it said it was too early to gauge the success of the campaign in more concrete terms, and did not give any indication of actual applications received to date but said it was “encouraged” by the response so far.

“It always takes several months between the placement of a recruitment ad and the hiring of an individual doctor, but we are very encouraged by the positive response so far,” said Ms Hoey. “An advertisement such as this works as part of an overall recruitment strategy. It is designed to engender a positive feeling about returning home among our target audience abroad. As well as having a soft emotional appeal, the ads point people to where they can read details of the contract online.

“The intention is that this combination of emotional and logical reasons to come home will bear fruit in the response to ads for specific posts. This will take time but we are very encouraged by the response so far.”

Agencies seeking to recruit doctors on the HSE’s behalf were reported last month to have targeted picket lines as members of the British Medical Association (BMA) took strike action over pay in England.

BMA consultant members are due to take further industrial action this week in their long-running dispute over pay with a 48-hour work stoppage planned from Thursday. The government has offered a pay rise of 6 per cent, while the union says pay has fallen by a third in real terms in the last 14 years.

Simon Walsh, a London-based consultant in emergency medicine and the deputy chair of the BMA’s consultants’ committee, said the recent ads had sparked widespread discussion about the difference in pay offered by the NHS and HSE, but that the age profile of consultants tended to be an obstacle to relocation.

“I think certainly there’s lots of conversations happening about Ireland and about the differences there,” he said. “Purely looking at the pay there’s a stark difference. Really you are looking at starting from double the base pay rate and so that’s definitely created a lot of conversation amongst colleagues. The difficulty is, of course, consultants generally are a bit longer in the tooth. They tend to have other commitments in their life; family, children’s schools and other things to consider.”

Dr Walsh suggested that such a switch could be particularly appealing to consultants currently based in Northern Ireland but the HSE will also hope to attract consultants that might have intended to move to the UK from a third country.

The HSE, meanwhile, says a total of 204 existing consultants have transferred to the new contract since it was introduced in March. It is understood that a significant additional number of applications are being processed and Ms Hoey said she expected the total number on the new contract to have reached 350 this week.