​Health Workforce Ireland

“Health systems maintain the life of a country, and the people who work in them are its life blood”
(Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson)

Who we are
Health Workforce Ireland is the home of the RCSI Health Workforce Research Group. Here we locate the mainly Health Research Board-funded research evidence that we have generated on the career and migration choices of health professionals in Ireland, especially doctors. Findings come from our research on:​

• career preferences of Irish medical graduates
• outward migration of doctors from Ireland
• migration of foreign trained doctors and nurses to Ireland, and
• the international dimensions of health worker migration

​Our aim
We aim to make our health workforce research findings accessible to all knowledge users –

• those tasked to make decisions on training, conditions of service and the measures needed to retain health professionals in the countries that have trained them.
• those doctors, nurses and decision makers who have contributed their time and insights to the research effort; and more broadly
• health workers worldwide who are the cornerstone of national health systems.

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Resources

• information on active and completed projects, including sources of funding
• published papers and conference presentations
• links to national and international partners and resources

New Publications from the Medical Career Tracking study:

• ​Doctor Retention in a COVID-world: an opportunity to reconfigure the health workforce, or “Plus ça change plus c’est la meme chose”? A Response to Commentaries on “Doctor Retention: A Cross-sectional Study of How Ireland Has Been Losing the Battle
  
  
• Factors influencing specialty choice and the effect of recall bias on findings from Irish medical graduates: a cross-sectional, longitudinal study.

• ​Doctor Retention: A Cross-sectional Study of How Ireland Has Been Losing the Battle​

 

• The impacts of training pathways and experiences during intern year on doctor emigration from Ireland

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Other recent RCSI publications on NCHDs and emigration​

• ​Retaining Our Doctors: Medical Workforce Evidence, 2013-18​

 

• “We've all had patients who've died …”: Narratives of emotion and ideals of competence among junior doctors

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• 'You do not cross them': Hierarchy and emotion in doctors' narratives of power relations in specialist training

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RCSI Health Workforce Research in the media

• RTE Radio One Drivetime (2018)
• Irish Examiner (2018): Young doctors still being driven abroad by conditions​ 
• RTE Radio News at One (2017)
• RTE Radio One Drivetime (2017)​

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Brain Drain to Brain Gain Project