This article is for you to read if you are a junior doctor who is:

1- Currently working in Ireland for less than 2 years

2- Planning to move to Ireland to practice medicine

3- Taking part in the international clinical programs such as international fellowship and postgraduate residency programs under the supervision of the training bodies in Ireland such as RCPI and RCSI

4- Not a junior doctor, but interested in helping a colleague who falls under one of the above categories.

Opportunities:

1-Training: There are many training programmes that are facilitated by the training bodies in Ireland such as the royal colleges. Unfortunately not all of them are accessible to doctors from overseas. There is a huge variation with some programmes have better chances than the others. In house academic and teaching activities and self directed learning are available in the majority of the hospitals around the country.

2-Research & audits: There are definitely many clinical sites who run research projects and some big teaching hospitals will havee clinical research facilities attached to them. Audits have become a legal requirement by the Irish Medical Council as part of your professional development programme and many hospitals have an audit facilitator a practice development coordinator who could help you with this.

3-Membership exams (Ireland, UK): You are in a better situation to clear your membership exams when you are working in the Ireland. By being close to the exam centers and able to afford to pay the exam fees, finding time to studay is the third ingredient you need to sort out to do your exams. The hospitals give you upto 18 days of paid study leave.

4-Personal development: There is a good opportunity for you to develop as a physician who will take some leadership role at some stage of their career. There is less hierarchy among the team members compared to clinical teams in the middle east or africa among other areas.

5-Moving to other countries (UK, US and Australia): since doing clinical and language exams are accessible in Ireland, this has made it easier for doctors to prepare for their next move in the hope of getting on structured training programmes

6-Management skills: There are many opportunities to improve your management skills by organising rotas, taking up the role of the Lead NCHD, and being active in NCHDs committees and other committees in the hospitals.

7-Financial gain: You are going to earn more than what you used to take home before coming to Ireland , im most cases. But depending on your earnings v expenses this will vary from a doctor to another and from a place to another

8-Patient-Doctor interaction and get to know the importance of the patient participation in making decisions about their own health.

*If you would like to learn how to transition smoothly to the healthcare system in Ireland follow the link to our free mini online course