{"id":394914,"date":"2026-04-12T15:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T15:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394914\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T15:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T15:35:07","slug":"cork-based-gp-says-foreign-doctors-in-ireland-can-face-a-slang-barrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394914\/","title":{"rendered":"Cork-based GP says foreign doctors in Ireland can face a slang barrier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Mohamed Elbadri was advising a patient about quitting smoking when some confusion arose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had asked as a first question: \u2018are you willing to quit smoking\u2019 and he said \u2018I will yeah\u2019,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happy, I thought he was determined to quit smoking so I didn\u2019t offer him anything [in support]. When he came back three months later and I asked how was his journey with smoking cessation, he said \u2018I told you I will never stop\u2019.\u201d The patient then explained the nuance of this phrase \u2018I will yeah\u2019.<\/p>\n

Dr Elbadri acknowledged the humour in the situation<\/a>, but he pointed out it could have been more serious.<\/p>\n

Now in his fourth year working at My Cork GP, he said more serious obstacles related to how different the Irish health system is to that in Sudan or his previous time in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would tell a patient that you are going to be referred and you will be seen soon,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realise they might not be seen by secondary care for two or three years, and I should be supporting them for all of that duration [of time].\u201d<\/p>\n

His visa allows him to bring his family with him. He travelled initially alone, arriving in March 2023.<\/p>\n

\"MyMy Cork GP doctor Mohemed Elbadri; Mater Hospital SHO Dr Alina Fatima, and Dr Nallasegarampillai Muthalvan of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, all spoke at the IMO annual conference. Picture: Shane O’Neill\/Coalesce<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved myself firstly, I thought I would settle in first but two weeks after I moved in, a devastating war started in my country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Instead of being separated for a few months, it was a year and a half before he saw his family again.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily I had support from Irish society, Irish people, the doctors here, the nurses and the staff which was a good thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Irish Medical Organisation\u2019s annual conference<\/a> in Killarney, he called on the IMO and other doctors\u2019 groups as well as the HSE to better support newly-arrived migrant doctors.<\/p>\n

About 40% of HSE doctors trained abroad, as did a growing number of GPs.<\/p>\n

He described support from Dr Nick Flynn and others at the practice as \u201cvery good\u201d, saying he felt \u201cblessed\u201d to have this. However more formal supports would help his patients also, he added.<\/p>\n

Dr Alina Fatima, now working at the Mater hospital in Dublin having moved from Pakistan, and Dr Nallasegarampillai Muthalvan at Drogheda Hospital, who moved from Sri Lanka, also spoke. All three mentioned that despite how welcoming most people are, they have seen changes in the last 18 months.<\/p>\n

Dr Fatima said: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to ignore\u201d saying this can happen \u201cnot just from the patients\u201d but also outside. However, like the others, she stressed her generally positive experiences here.<\/p>\n

Niamh Griffin, Health Correspondent\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Mohamed Elbadri was advising a patient about quitting smoking when some confusion arose. \u201cI had asked as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,103,2120,61,1629,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-394914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cork-news","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-hse","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}