Opportunities and challenges of moving to\/working in Ireland as a junior doctor – part 2

Accommodation: finding a place to live has become a major concern of every doctor moving from a hospital to another. It has become particularly difficult in the last 4-5 years putting Dublin at the top of the most expensive EU city when it comes to the cost and availability of suitable accommodation. With accommodation come the bills for electricity, gas, internet, phone service, and so on. The person needs to organize these services by looking for billing companies and setting up a service contract with them.

Cost of living: The total cost is dependent upon the cost of accommodation in addition to the utilities and child care. Maintain a personal/family care has become a very expensive process recently with insurance premium soaring sky high. Again you might pay up to close to €4000 monthly which will leave you with little if any savings.

Job security: It has been proven difficult for junior doctors to secure jobs and that is very upsetting and quite disturbing especially for families with children in schools. As finding a job is usually the first step before looking for accommodation and then kids’ school if that applies to your case.

Adjusting and adapting: Any new system will have its challenges and specifics a doctor needs to know and adapt to be able to function properly as an active team member. The Irish health system is not immune to this issue and people usually find it hard at the beginning

Workload: Depending on where you have come from to practice medicine in Ireland, the impact of this challenge will vary. If you used to do 12 hours shift or less, then be prepared for long shifts of up to 24 hours or even more in some settings.

Non-clinical duties: There are many duties that doctors continue to perform in Irish hospitals despite an agreement to transfer these tasks to other healthcare providers. These include ECG, intravenous cannula insertion and phlebotomy. Unfortunately, there are much time consuming, non-clinical duties that doctors do as well and these include sending faxes, making phone calls to parents and other hospitals/teams and typing letters.

Using the technology: Again depending on where you are working there will be significant variation in systems used around the country. These are usually about dictation of letters (recording of clinic letters) and reviewing the results from laboratory systems and images/reports on radiology systems