Ireland Wants Indian and Pakistani Physicians to Fill 4600 Jobs

[Riaz Haq]

Ireland is looking to India and Pakistan to deal with its doctor shortage, according to Irish Times:

About 4,600 junior doctors are needed to staff our hospitals and most of them rotate jobs every six months as part of their training schemes, so they get six months’ experience in paediatrics, another six months in surgery, psychiatry and obstetrics and so on.

Of the more than 4,000 junior doctor posts in the system, about 3,650 or 80 per cent are in training posts accredited by colleges such as the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

The 1,000 non-training posts have traditionally been the ones which proved more difficult to fill – though more than half of these are now staffed by doctors on contracts of indefinite duration – but this year even training posts are proving less attractive to applicants. Eunan Friel, managing director of surgical affairs at the royal college, said that to date 219 out of a total of 255 places across the three years of its basic surgical training scheme have been filled, leaving 36 vacant.

In April it was predicted some 400 junior doctor posts could remain unfilled on July 11th but more recent estimates presented to Minister for Health James Reilly suggest that figure could be 180. There are now fears that while locums will have to be retained to staff essential services in larger hospitals, the Health Service Executive may no longer continue to fund costly agency staff to keep smaller emergency departments open.

So where lies the solution?

The HSE on the one hand says there is a worldwide shortage of junior doctors and on the other says it has found more than 420 experienced doctors during a recent trip to India and Pakistan who would be willing to come and work here if only they didn’t have to jump through so many hoops to get on the medical register.

Yet the Medical Council says only 30 of these 420 have even applied to register here yet.

It appears the HSE is hoping Dr Reilly will amend the law to make it easier for non-EU doctors to come and work here. He is considering this option but must exercise caution so as to ensure patient safety is not put at risk.

The Irish Medical Organisation is meanwhile urging the HSE to take steps to retain Irish doctors in the system rather than focusing on overseas recruitment.

[Riaz Haq]

Here's Express Tribune on Saudi Arabia hiring thousands of Pakistani doctors:

Dr Nawaz* (not his real name) is a medical officer (MO) at Mayo Hospital and, like all government-employed doctors in BPS-17, got a Rs15,000 raise last year, taking his monthly pay to Rs44,000. Yesterday, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health offered him a job for 6,000 riyals (Rs145,000) a month.

“It’s a handsome offer. I’m going to take it,” said the doctor after an interview with the Overseas Employment Corporation, a Pakistani government agency that is hiring doctors for Saudi Arabia.

At Mayo Hospital, Dr Nawaz has to serve in shifts of up to 48 hours straight. In Saudi Arabia, he will get two days off each week and work eight-hour days.

“Here we have a lot of uncertainty. We cannot get a raise unless we protest and boycott work. I am getting out of it,” he said.

Dr Nawaz has been in a government job for three years and said he would resign before leaving. However, many doctors with more years in government service will likely seek permission from the government to go on leave to Saudi Arabia so they can return to their government jobs upon coming back to Pakistan.

Two private Saudi agencies are also interviewing Pakistani doctors for posts in government hospitals in Saudi Arabia. Saturday was the last day of interviews in Lahore. Interviews in Islamabad will take place from January 11 to 13.

“Around 3,000 doctors have been interviewed in Lahore for different positions including residents and consultants,” an OEC official told The Express Tribune.

He said that the Saudi government had recently built a lot of new hospitals and they were short of doctors. He did not say how many doctors the Saudis aimed to hire from Pakistan.

Residents (trainee doctors) are being offered salaries of between 5,000 (Rs121,000) and 8,000 riyals (Rs193,000), while consultants with a fellowship are being offered between 12,000 (Rs290,000) and 16,000 (Rs387,000) riyals. Senior professors and associate professors are being offered up to 30,000 riyals (Rs725,000) per month.

Last year, the Saudi Ministry of Health hired a thousand Pakistani doctors. Shortly afterwards, government-employed doctors in Punjab went on strike to demand better pay.

“This time they are going to hire more doctors,” said a senior doctor who went for an interview.

“The Indian government has just increased the salaries of public doctors and no Indian doctors are going to Saudi Arabia. They are focusing more on Pakistani doctors this year.” The Pakistan Medical Association warned that the country was losing its best doctors to Saudi Arabia and urged the government to improve the service structure for health professionals to stop the brain drain.

“The government on one hand claims to invest in health and education and on the other it does nothing to stop the brain drain,” said PMA Joint Secretary Dr Salman Kazmi.

“The government announces a pay package for doctors and nurses only when they go on strike or take to the streets. This is no solution. The government needs to develop a structure otherwise we may run out doctors.”

A Health Department spokesman said that the government couldn’t match the salaries offered to doctors abroad, especially when they had only recently been given raises. He said the government spent hundreds of millions of rupees on educating and training doctors and they should consider reasons other than monetary for working in Pakistan.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/318194/saudi-arabia-to-import-thousands...

[Riaz Haq]

HOSPITALS have had to recruit 115 trainee medics from Pakistan to try to maintain services from next month amid fears of another major shortage in junior doctors.

It comes as hundreds of Irish- trained junior doctors are among those who are shunning posts in hospitals here and opting for training abroad, despite the taxpayer paying up to €100,000 to fund each of their degrees in medical school.

The knock-on effect for patients is that hospitals are drawing up contingency plans which could see clinics and other services reduced in the coming weeks in order to ensure control is maintained over standards of safety as the doctors switch jobs as part of their six-month training schedules.

Emergency

The Health Service Executive (HSE) said yesterday that there is an ongoing vacancy rate of 100 to 120 junior doctors posts in hospitals and the shortage of some grades is particularly felt in emergency departments.

It is hiring doctors from Pakistan and other EU States, said a spokeswoman.

The shortage of doctors means more payments of around €1,000 a day to agency staff who are needed to maintain rosters.

However, the HSE said the positions will be filled.

"Vacancy data to date suggests that the fill rate of posts is slightly ahead of same period in 2013 and taking this into account, it is not anticipated at this time that there will be any reduction in service arising from difficulties filling posts," a spokeswoman said.

The HSE said it also trying to make training posts more attractive by offering contracts of one to two years for some jobs.

It is now on its second round of recruitment to fill basic jobs for trainees in specialties such as obstetrics, psychiatry, general practice and opthalmology.

Health Minister James Reilly said figures show that the educational cost of educating a doctor in an Irish medical school is now in the region of €80,000 to €100,000.

"This cost does not all fall to be met by the State," he said.

"In relation to undergraduate medical programmes, most students pay a student contribution; this is currently set at €2,500 per annum and will rise to €3,000 in 2015. Grant holders may have this paid on their behalf.

"Undergraduate students who are not eligible for "free fees" are liable to pay fees. In relation to graduate medical programmes, the student pays a fee of approximately €15,000 per year. "

Fine Gael Senator Colm Burke has called on the minister to make it a requirement that doctors whose education is paid for should work in an Irish hospital for the first three of the five years after graduation.

Around 600 are graduating from medical schools here annually but half of these emigrate after they complete their intern year, he added.
- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/hospitals-recruit-115-j...

[Riaz Haq]

In previous years, the HSE has targeted India and Pakistan, and South Africa, to plug the gap in the Irish health service arising from a shortage of junior doctors. This year, it has indicated that recruitment is being stepped up in eastern Europe.
“While the Department of Health and the HSE acknowledge that there are some ‘challenges’ with recruitment, they seem to fail to appreciate the extent of the problem and its likely implications for patients,” the association says.
Where gaps appear in the roster, this will inevitably lead to more delays in the treatment of patients, it says. “This places patients at increased risk of avoidable poor outcomes and will also heap further pressure upon the remaining medical and nursing staff in EDs.”
The association say many Irish graduates are now training and working abroad, especially in Australia, “in preference to working in overcrowded and poorly staffed EDs in Ireland”.
“If this potentially lost generation of medical graduates is to be attracted back to Ireland, then the underlying problems of poor levels of staffing, comparably poor terms and conditions of employment, inadequate numbers of consultants, poor infrastructure and persistent ED overcrowding need to be rapidly addressed.”
“Urgent steps” need to be taken to more effectively recruit doctors from around the world, it says, and the time taken to process applications needs to be shortened.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hospitals-facing-staffing-mel...