Canadian medical students are flocking to Ireland
Despite a shortage of doctors in
Canada, many good students are
being refused admission to that
country's medical schools and
are flocking to Ireland's instead - so much so that the Canadian
Medical Association's news and
features editor, Pat Sullivan, calls
Ireland the home of Canada's
"17th medical school."
In an article in the Journal of
the Canadian Medical Association,
he says that more than 100 Canadians are currently enrolled in
medicine at University College
Dublin, University College Cork,
Trinity College Dublin, and the
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. "They outnumber the first
year students at nine of Canada's
16 medical schools, and their
total is roughly double the size of
the first year class at the University of Saskatchewan," he says.
Most are hoping that they
will eventually be able to practise
medicine in Canada but, as 28
year old Ilana Porzecanski, of
Victoria, British Columbia, a
fourth year medical student at
University College Dublin, says:
"If Canada doesn't want us,
somebody else will." In fact,
more than 700 of those with
postgraduate training have
received limited licences, which
restrict the location or type of
practice, or both.
The students are in Ireland
thanks to the Atlantic Bridge
Programme, created by Ireland's
medical schools to attract North
American students in the face of
growing competition from those
in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
The number of applications from
Canada matches the decline in
the number of first year positions
at Canadian schools. Peter
Nealon, the programme's director, says that about 70 applications a year now come from
Canada, and about half of these
are accepted. Almost all the
applicants have been rejected by
Canadian schools. The Canadian
Medical Forum, which includes
the Canadian Medical Association, has called for an increase in
the number of government funded training positions from the
current level of 100 slots to 120
slots per 100 medical school
graduates.
Canadian students studying in
Ireland find that their biggest
problem is high debt loads. They
pay about three times more in
tuition - about C$30 000 annually - than in the most expensive
Canadian school, and they find
the cost of living higher. Most find
themselves paying C$45 000-50 000 a year altogether.
Mr Nealon says their best bet
to find a place to practise is in
the United States. For this the
students need an internship as
well, but once they have it, "it is
relatively easy to land a residency position in the US because
the country has about 22 000
residency slots but produces
only 15 000 new doctors a year."
David Spurgeon, Quebec, Canada
studentBMJ 2000;08:131-174 May ISSN 0966-6494
