{"id":610437,"date":"2026-08-31T19:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T19:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610437\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T19:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T19:06:12","slug":"growing-number-of-doctors-in-ireland-are-women-and-from-outside-the-eu-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610437\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing number of doctors in Ireland are women and from outside the EU \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A growing proportion of doctors practising in Ireland are women, and increasing numbers qualified outside the EU<\/a> and Britain<\/a>, new figures show.<\/p>\n

The latest medical workforce intelligence report, published on Monday by the Medical Council<\/a>, says women accounted for 47.6 per cent of clinically active doctors last year, continuing a \u201cslight but steady\u201d increase in recent years \u2013 from 47.2 per cent in 2024 and 47 per cent in 2023. <\/p>\n

Among general practitioners (GPs), women account for 53 per cent of the total workforce of 5,017.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proportion of female doctors will most likely continue to increase as older male doctors retire …[so] exploring and understanding the female GP workforce and their career choices is crucial to planning a sustainable future medical workforce,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

Almost a third of doctors completed their training outside Britain and the EU. The report notes 56.6 per cent of doctors obtained their basic medical qualification in Ireland; 13.9 per cent in the EU or UK; and 29.5 per cent outside Ireland, the EU or Britain. <\/p>\n

This continues a year-on-year rise, from 27.8 per cent in 2024 and 25.7 per cent in 2023, of this latter cohort. <\/p>\n

The most common country of qualification for international graduates was Pakistan, accounting for 41.7 per cent of the international graduate cohort, followed by Sudan accounting for 20.3 per cent.<\/p>\n

In all there were 22,257 clinically active doctors practising medicine in Ireland last year.<\/p>\n

Their mean age was 43.6 years, with approximately one in five aged 55 or older and approaching typical retirement age. <\/p>\n

The gender split was almost even across all age groups except the 55 or older cohort, where 66 per cent were men.<\/p>\n

Almost a third of doctors said they \u201cfound it difficult\u201d to provide a patient with \u201csufficient care\u201d at least once a week, in response to a question on patient safety.<\/p>\n

The proportion who found this \u2013 27.6 per cent \u2013 was up from 26.1 per cent in 2024.<\/p>\n

Asked to identify the \u201cmain barriers\u201d to patient care from a list of options, the most often selected was \u201cpressure on workloads\u201d. This accounted for 16.7 per cent of all responses and was chosen by 59 per cent of doctors. <\/p>\n

That was followed by \u201ctime spent on bureaucracy\u201d and \u201covercrowding\u201d. <\/p>\n

GPs reported the greatest strain of any group. This group reported the highest rate of difficulty, with 34.7 per cent experiencing barriers at least weekly. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0What do Irish experts think about controversial ADHD claims?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The leading barriers were bureaucracy and administration, workload and difficulty accessing specialist opinion. <\/p>\n

Just over 10 per cent of GPs worked more than 48 hours a week, with a significant proportion of this accounted for by administration rather than face-to-face patient care. <\/p>\n

\u201cSignificant workload burden outside of the direct patient consultation can impact GP retention and patient safety,\u201d the report adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A growing proportion of doctors practising in Ireland are women, and increasing numbers qualified outside the EU and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2244,61,60,37636,43,303],"class_list":["post-610437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-eu","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-medical-council","tag-news","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610437","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=610437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}