Sir, – I am confused by Prof Frank Muldowney’s analysis of the junior doctor shortage (February 13th). He seems to believe Prof Shaun McCann offered no remedy to the situation having highlighted many of the reasons for this “crazy state of affairs”. Indeed the last line of Prof McCann’s article expresses the need to provide “Proper training with adequate remuneration and good career prospects”. This would seem like a very sensible solution. The idea of indebting medical graduates as a means of preventing them from leaving is abhorrent and in no way treats “the underlying disease” to which Prof Muldowney refers.
There are many stark comparisons between how medical students and graduates are treated in Ireland compared with both other health professionals at home and with other medical graduates internationally. The taxpayer bears the expense, for instance, of not only medical undergraduate education but of all undergraduate health education including generous wages to nursing students. The medical student who spends endless hours studying to manage medical emergencies is surely not contributing less to society or health than the nursing student on placement on hospital wards, for instance?
New Zealand faced a huge issue with doctor shortages many years ago and health officials there realised the only sustainable way to maintain its workforce was to create an attractive system in which to work, based on the principals Prof McCann refers to. Many years later our doctors are now theirs and their problems are now ours. It seems we have not yet had the courage to definitively remedy them, contributed in no small part to persistent negative misrepresentation of junior doctors’ conditions in the national media.
Let me suggest a simple first step in that process. In most of the English-speaking world, the “junior doctors” we refer to here are referred to as “resident doctors” in recognition of the reliance on their knowledge and effort, and in recognition also that the responsibilities gladly borne and decisions made by this incredibly dedicated group of people are of the utmost gravity in patients’ lives and that there is nothing “junior” about them. – Yours, etc,