Australia Recruits the Doctors that Ireland Struggles to Retain


By Kelly Waldron • Get the Data


“Now recruiting healthcare workers,” reads a large billboard near the Mater, one of Dublin’s major hospitals. It shows a healthcare worker smiling underneath a surgical mask. Similar billboards are dotted around the city; this is no Irish recruiting effort, but rather an Australian one, paid for by the Government of Victoria.

Ireland produces the most medical graduates of any country among the OECD, a group of mostly wealthy countries. But they are emigrating in droves, many of them to the sunny Australian coast. Between June 2021 and 2022, 381 skilled visas were granted to Irish medical doctors by the Australian government, most of whom are under the age of 30. That is equivalent to over forty percent of the number of people who became registered doctors in Ireland last year–888 graduates.

The number of Irish doctors applying for skilled visas to practice in Australia continues to increase, even since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newly accredited doctors are all too familiar with the sector’s ills. That they are emigrating in droves is not an issue of training but retention. To be fully certified, graduates must complete one year of rotations as junior doctors in Ireland. That is long enough to get run down, according to Hughie Lavelle, who studied medicine at the University of Galway and completed his rotation in Dublin before moving to Perth last year.

“I was working 15 hours pretty regularly in the hospital five days a week, taking on far too much responsibility for the amount of experience I had,” he said.

For the hours clocked in Australian hospitals, Lavelle says it is a different story. “This is just the polar opposite in every regard … better pay, better lifestyle, less working hours, less stressful, intense, tedious work during those working hours.”

The better working conditions in Australian hospitals are largely related to ample staffing. Patrick Hogan, from Cork, also moved to Australia—first to Perth, then Sydney—after completing his year-long rotation in Dublin in 2021. He also noted the remarkable improvement in work-life balance.

“The teams are better staffed. You have more senior doctors, more junior doctors. The workload is spread more evenly,” he said, over the phone—shortly before hanging up to go play tennis with another doctor from Ireland. Both of them were off for a four-day weekend.

Eoin Kelleher is a doctor from Dublin who trained in Ireland and is now practicing in the UK, and pursuing a PhD at Oxford University. He has been vocal online about issues in the Irish healthcare system, mostly through satirical illustrations he creates for the Irish Medical Journal.

According to Kelleher, there are two main reasons why Irish doctors choose to move to Australia. For one, many are seeking a break and an experience abroad; a sort of ‘gap year’. “They’ve worked in the health system for a year, maybe they're a bit disillusioned, or they just want to go away,” he said.

Others choose to leave for their own career development. “There is only so much you can get exposed to in a small country,” he said. Moreover, it is often expected that doctors gain medical experience abroad to work in more senior positions back home.

While there may be different incentives to leave Ireland, the sorry state of the healthcare system at home is largely why many choose to stay abroad.

The HSE, the national public service provider, has long been plagued with staffing and budget shortfalls, which worsened throughout the pandemic. Last year, the Irish Medical Organisation, the union that represents healthcare workers, announced that 97% of its junior doctors voted in favor of industrial action in response to unsustainable working conditions, including unsafe and illegal working hours.

Western Australia is their landing pad of choice. Out of the 381 medical visas granted, around 65% of them were destined for practitioners going to the golden state. One reason why is that it is easier to send off an application. The state healthcare system funnels job applications through a centralized portal run by a third party, whereas applications in other states typically require tedious individual applications to hospitals and service providers. Landing a job in Perth takes less head-scratching than applying for one in Melbourne or Sydney, Australia’s two largest cities.

A Streamlined Journey

Western Australia’s centralized recruitment portal for Resident Medical

Officers makes it the most popular destination in the country for Irish doctors.

 

New South

Wales

11

Victoria

60

Other States

26

Western Australia

246 medical visas granted*

Queensland

38

*Visas granted to Irish Citizens under the General Practitioners and

Resident Medical Officers occupation, between June 2021 and 2022.

A Streamlined Journey

Western Australia’s centralized recruitment portal for

Resident Medical Officers makes it the most popular

destination in the country for Irish doctors.

 

NSW

11

VIC

60

Other

26

Western Australia

246 medical visas granted*

QLD

38

*Visas granted to Irish Citizens under the General Practitioners

and Resident Medical Officers occupation, between June 2021

and 2022. Source: Australian Government, Department of

Home Affairs.

Irish applicants also face less competition from their Australian counterparts in Perth. With the country’s largest hospitals, specialized facilities, and research universities located in Sydney and Melbourne—more locals are applying for placements there than in Western Australia.

It is also a trail well traveled. Historic ties between Australia and Ireland have led to an Irish stronghold across the country, which makes the move less daunting. “You know that you can go there and that there will be an Irish community,” said Lavelle. Perth even boasts its own Gaelic sports club.

There is truly a support bubble. “There's just so many Irish doctors, and I think they're just so interconnected. And you all work in the same hospitals,” said Hogan, referring to the Irish community in Perth.

The fact that Australia is stepping in and actively recruiting Irish-trained medical practitioners looking for better work-life balance is noteworthy, too. Its healthcare system is largely dependent on foreign labor, and Irish graduates make ideal candidates; as English speakers with degrees that are automatically recognized by the Medical Board of Australia.

As such, the Australian government makes the path to permanent residency for Irish citizens in medical occupations a straightforward one.

Although for all the good things that attract workers—better pay, working hours and weather—there remains one major pitfall: distance. For many, the move to somewhere so far away from home remains a big ask.

“Home will always have the draw of being home,” said Kelleher.

And many Irish doctors do choose to move back home. The HSE recently published a study that aims to track retention levels in the hospital system. It noted that out of the 2015 medical cohort, 84% had returned by 2021 to enroll in Basic Specialist Training (BST), the scheme that allows doctors who have completed their initial one-year residency to specialize in a medical area.

Hogan and Lavelle both intend to, too—but not out of desire to work within the Irish system. In fact, Hogan said he hopes to leave clinical medicine and pursue a Master’s degree instead, after having seen first hand what the working conditions are like in Ireland.

“I can't really see myself kind of signing up the rest of my life to work for the agency and those conditions,” he said, referring to work in the HSE.

If Ireland is to address staffing shortages in the healthcare sector, it will have to look to improve working conditions for doctors to look to follow their career aspirations at home.