Sir, – I’m writing in relation to the Government’s “relentless efforts to retain doctors”. I am due to qualify this coming June from a graduate entry medical course. To get into the course, I had to sign up to the only available funding option in Ireland for the course – a loan from Bank of Ireland, which in essence is €15,000 per year for four years, totalling €60,000. With interest every year, that’s €90,000. This loan has since been discontinued and future students will have to rely on saving, parental loans or choose an alternative career path. So just doing the basic maths with the starting salary of about €35,000 as a medical intern, the loan repayments of circa €900 per month, the cost of living and the housing crisis, it will take us all an excessively long time to pay this loan off.
However, one solution would be to offer free education to the Irish students for postgrad medicine in return for four years of service back to the HSE. It’s a win-win for the HSE and us. The Government could offer a buyout scheme if, once qualified, doctors decided to travel to Australia. This would provide an incentive for the medical student to stay for a longer duration in Ireland and increase the likelihood of staying for the long term.
Postgrad medicine is a slog; it is five to six years of an undergraduate course condensed to four years. It is non-stop studying. We are in it and committed because we want to be. I am currently training in Limerick University Hospital, which is nationally and formally recognised as “overcrowded and understaffed” (HIQA, June 2022).
What is our incentive to stay, when we can travel abroad and pay back the loan far quicker, in better working conditions? – Yours, etc,
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CAITRIONA RYAN,
(Fourth-year
medical student),
Castletroy,
Co Limerick.