Intern Centralisation?

Susie-O-

Can anyone tell me is this actually happening? apparently this year the HSE are introducing a CAO type system, but it's EU wide, so there's a possibility that if you don't do particularly well in your finals, you could end up being forced to do your internship abroad??? It was announced in the Mater a couple of weeks ago!

imported_guy

Susie-O- wrote: »

Can anyone tell me is this actually happening? apparently this year the HSE are introducing a CAO type system, but it's EU wide, so there's a possibility that if you don't do particularly well in your finals, you could end up being forced to do your internship abroad??? It was announced in the Mater a couple of weeks ago!

link?

i doubt an irish graduate will be able to speak enough polish to work in poland, or romanian/latvian/swedish we dont even do those languages in school (you can do some of em privately and sit them in the LC i think)

chocfan

I think it's all totally up in the air at the moment.

I'm in Final Med and our med school have told us that as far as they know, it's a national intern match and not an EU wide one, so it would just be based in Ireland.

I know they're opposed to it and apparently some of the other med schools are as well but they have told us that they believe it'll go ahead. They have no other information at all about how it will work but are hoping to find that out from the HSE over the next few weeks and are planning an information evening for us then.

I wonder if it will really change things that much for Irish grads? My guess would be most Dublin grads would want to stay in Dublin, most Cork ones in Cork etc, for the intern year anyway.

Vorsprung

I suspect part of the reason for this is that some of the medical schools (eg UL) don't have links to hospitals that will allocate the college intern spots - UL uses hospitals that are already linked to UCC and NUIG.

I'm not sure if it's going to make a huge difference. If you're in UCD now, you could be anywhere from Clonmel to Letterkenny to Ballinasloe on July 1st, and there's a good chance you may have never set foot in the place. The same applies to the other colleges I'm sure.

Prime Mover

I'm curious as to how they plan to rank people. The CAO and the National Resident Matching Program in the US have a national exam to help rank the candidates. Who is to say, for example, that the UL making scheme is the same as the Trinity marking scheme?

ORLY?

Prime Mover wrote: »

I'm curious as to how they plan to rank people. The CAO and the National Resident Matching Program in the US have a national exam to help rank the candidates. Who is to say, for example, that the UL making scheme is the same as the Trinity marking scheme?

The only way I could see it working would be to assign so many points for finishing in the top 5% of your class (for example), so many for finishing in the next 5% etc. In essence, the top few students in each school would get their pick of places, then the next tier of students from each and so on.

imported_guy

ORLY? wrote: »

The only way I could see it working would be to assign so many points for finishing in the top 5% of your class (for example), so many for finishing in the next 5% etc. In essence, the top few students in each school would get their pick of places, then the next tier of students from each and so on.

its just an intern year, and people will be doing it in ireland (since OP didnt post a reference and my argument still stands, i dont speak polish or italian i cant go to those countries.), it doesnt really matter where you do it (as long as the hospital providing the training doesnt have bad rep and a decent intern programme, like CUH/St James etc), its not like in america where you need to score in the top 2 percentile in USMLE step1/2CK to land a residency in neurosurgery/plastic surgery or orthopedic surgery, its just a 1 year intern programme, unless they bought in a training system like USA (or even maybe kinda like the UK one) it doesnt matter where you do the internship

docbroc

I have heard mutterings about this from on high. Its needed for several reasons but mainly
1: Way more students qualifying than intern spots. Next year there will be more than double the amount of graduates to intern spots
2: The antisipated 40 - 50 Irish eastern european graduates who will have no access to the needed registration year of internship
3: The growing militancy and work to rule of existing interns vis a vis working unpaid, days off post call etc
4: The use of pre-internships as a source of free labour for the HSE

Basically its envisaged that it will work like SHO placement on BST. Intern completes standardised application form +/- interview, pays 200 euro and gets allocated spot based on ranking. "Experience" - unpaid pre-internship will count highly. When they refer to EU-wide they mean all EU medical graduates can apply for it, not that you could be sent to a Polish hospital. The idea is remove the security around the intern year, increase access to peripheral hospitals and ramp up the competition amongst interns. If you miss out on a job - no problem, do 6 months unpaid pre-interning and bobs your uncle you will have a job in the next round. Anger any of your consultants by refusing to work for free - you can be replaced in a heartbeat. Good times ahead folks.

ORLY?

docbroc wrote: »

I have heard mutterings about this from on high. Its needed for several reasons but mainly
1: Way more students qualifying than intern spots. Next year there will be more than double the amount of graduates to intern spots
2: The antisipated 40 - 50 Irish eastern european graduates who will have no access to the needed registration year of internship
3: The growing militancy and work to rule of existing interns vis a vis working unpaid, days off post call etc
4: The use of pre-internships as a source of free labour for the HSE

Basically its envisaged that it will work like SHO placement on BST. Intern completes standardised application form +/- interview, pays 200 euro and gets allocated spot based on ranking. "Experience" - unpaid pre-internship will count highly. When they refer to EU-wide they mean all EU medical graduates can apply for it, not that you could be sent to a Polish hospital. The idea is remove the security around the intern year, increase access to peripheral hospitals and ramp up the competition amongst interns. If you miss out on a job - no problem, do 6 months unpaid pre-interning and bobs your uncle you will have a job in the next round. Anger any of your consultants by refusing to work for free - you can be replaced in a heartbeat. Good times ahead folks.

Really, I don't see how they will bring anything but medical school performance into it, how can they? It would give such a massive advantage to all the people coming out of the graduate courses, many of whom will have published papers, lots of previous hospital experience etc.

As for there being more graduates than intern spots...Whether or not that will be a problem really depends on what they mean by EU wide, people graduating form EU medical schools or citizens of countries in the EU, or both?

To "imported guy" re: it doesn't matter where you do the intern year, no, not from an overall career point of view, but it terms of living in the place you want to, being close to family etc., it matters alot to most people.

imported_guy

docbroc wrote: »

I have heard mutterings about this from on high. Its needed for several reasons but mainly
1: Way more students qualifying than intern spots. Next year there will be more than double the amount of graduates to intern spots
2: The antisipated 40 - 50 Irish eastern european graduates who will have no access to the needed registration year of internship
3: The growing militancy and work to rule of existing interns vis a vis working unpaid, days off post call etc
4: The use of pre-internships as a source of free labour for the HSE

Basically its envisaged that it will work like SHO placement on BST. Intern completes standardised application form +/- interview, pays 200 euro and gets allocated spot based on ranking. "Experience" - unpaid pre-internship will count highly. When they refer to EU-wide they mean all EU medical graduates can apply for it, not that you could be sent to a Polish hospital. The idea is remove the security around the intern year, increase access to peripheral hospitals and ramp up the competition amongst interns. If you miss out on a job - no problem, do 6 months unpaid pre-interning and bobs your uncle you will have a job in the next round. Anger any of your consultants by refusing to work for free - you can be replaced in a heartbeat. Good times ahead folks.

strong first post, lol...... thats what i thought it might be like, and i seriously doubt someone will pick a polish intern who cant speak proper english to save his own life, never mind a patients, over an irish medical graduate, i cant see eastern euro doctors working here without doing something like TRAS/PLAB first, day will come when malpractice suites against them start raining down (alot of people will probably sue them just for being polish/lithuanian etc)


RE ORLY::: ofcourse everyone will have a preference, thats about it, but there are come quality control issues though, like Bonsecours hospital in cork doesnt keep interns over night anymore (to save money), and hence if someone wants a better education they might consider CUH/mercy hospital and still stay around in cork

dissed doc

ORLY? wrote: »

Really, I don't see how they will bring anything but medical school performance into it, how can they? It would give such a massive advantage to all the people coming out of the graduate courses, many of whom will have published papers, lots of previous hospital experience etc.

As for there being more graduates than intern spots...Whether or not that will be a problem really depends on what they mean by EU wide, people graduating form EU medical schools or citizens of countries in the EU, or both?

To "imported guy" re: it doesn't matter where you do the intern year, no, not from an overall career point of view, but it terms of living in the place you want to, being close to family etc., it matters alot to most people.

This post is from some communist past I think. No offence, but the situation of consultant tutors and hospitals picking more senior, published candidates is exactly what is needed in Ireland which has been running off of BS for decades - excellent people can be overlooked for xyz's son. The US system makes it fair, in the sense of the leaving cert: get the scores/poitns, and you can be a candidate. At that level, you may be fresh out of med school and that may be what they are looking for in e.g., CUH but if the department head of surgery wants to get funding to do research he may instead opt for the GEM guy with 10 publications but who has a standard pass.

Competition is good. There is none in Ireland as it's a closed communist-style shop where everyone good or bad gets paid the same, and if you are not "in", you are off to Australia. The only competition here is how much ass licking is done (no offence), not on actual high quality research and advancing Irish medicine, which is why we have such poorly internationally regarded universities and medical practice (for a western country).

ORLY?

dissed doc wrote: »

This post is from some communist past I think. No offence, but the situation of consultant tutors and hospitals picking more senior, published candidates is exactly what is needed in Ireland which has been running off of BS for decades - excellent people can be overlooked for xyz's son. The US system makes it fair, in the sense of the leaving cert: get the scores/poitns, and you can be a candidate. At that level, you may be fresh out of med school and that may be what they are looking for in e.g., CUH but if the department head of surgery wants to get funding to do research he may instead opt for the GEM guy with 10 publications but who has a standard pass.

Competition is good. There is none in Ireland as it's a closed communist-style shop where everyone good or bad gets paid the same, and if you are not "in", you are off to Australia. The only competition here is how much ass licking is done (no offence), not on actual high quality research and advancing Irish medicine, which is why we have such poorly internationally regarded universities and medical practice (for a western country).

I think you're assuming too much, some Communist past? The only experience I've ever had with the medical establishment started about 18 months ago when I went back to study graduate medicine. A centralised system will introduce some competition on the basis of medical school results, but I don't think that they will go about shafting a group of people who at the age of 22/23 haven't had the opportunity to do anything else but attend medical school since they were 17/18 by favouring the grad students.

I agree that in applying for everything after intern year, all types of qualifications and experience will be assesed, and being in a graduate course I'm glad of it, but I don't see it happening for the purposes of intern placement.

imported_guy

dissed doc wrote: »

This post is from some communist past I think. No offence, but the situation of consultant tutors and hospitals picking more senior, published candidates is exactly what is needed in Ireland which has been running off of BS for decades - excellent people can be overlooked for xyz's son. The US system makes it fair, in the sense of the leaving cert: get the scores/poitns, and you can be a candidate. At that level, you may be fresh out of med school and that may be what they are looking for in e.g., CUH but if the department head of surgery wants to get funding to do research he may instead opt for the GEM guy with 10 publications but who has a standard pass.

Competition is good. There is none in Ireland as it's a closed communist-style shop where everyone good or bad gets paid the same, and if you are not "in", you are off to Australia. The only competition here is how much ass licking is done (no offence), not on actual high quality research and advancing Irish medicine, which is why we have such poorly internationally regarded universities and medical practice (for a western country).

US system is not fair at all, when you apply for residency through NRMP, alot of programmes already filter you out (such as some neurosurgery/plastic/orthopedic... none of which have more than 200 places im pretty sure.), if you select you need a visa/dont have a green card. and its blatant discrimination against IMGs/FMGs (international/foreign med grads), because most programmes dont want to pay 5k$ extra to sponsor a visa and choose a FMG who scored maybe 1 percentile higher than an american student on USMLE step1/2ck. second of all, its pretty naive of you to think you can pull strings to get a job in ireland, but not in america? well, its actually easier to pull strings in america, if you know someone already in a residency programme, or know an attending physician at the programme you are interested in, you will have a strong LOR from the attending and he will probably "personally" put in a good word.

Narkius Maximus

imported_guy wrote: »

its just an intern year, and people will be doing it in ireland (since OP didnt post a reference and my argument still stands, i dont speak polish or italian i cant go to those countries.)

It is open to all EU candidates to apply. As are all jobs in Ireland, similarly we can apply elsewhere in the EU, if you parlez the lingo.

Now Imported Guy, are you actually in a Medical school, because I think from previous posts it was established that you are not. You have no experience of the Irish medical school system, other than form thr outside nor have you any experience of the wonderous, splendiferous corporation that is the HSE. There are no links, there never will be, it's the HSE, champions of spin and misdirection. If it's anything like the cervical vaccine programme it will end up cancelled, delayed,postponed, whatever. It will be an interesting couple of months though.

On an aside, I had heard that they were going to rank the colleges and degrees awarded. So that somewhere that hands out sweet FA Firsts will be better than those (that) college that hands them out like skittles-you all know the one!!

Good luck to all final years, at least I kow who ever becomes my intern will be bloody good. I'd hate to be stuck in clonmel for a year. Yikes!!!

bananas1980

Narkius Maximus wrote: »

It is open to all EU candidates to apply. As are all jobs in Ireland, similarly we can apply elsewhere in the EU, if you parlez the lingo.

Now Imported Guy, are you actually in a Medical school, because I think from previous posts it was established that you are not. You have no experience of the Irish medical school system, other than form thr outside nor have you any experience of the wonderous, splendiferous corporation that is the HSE. There are no links, there never will be, it's the HSE, champions of spin and misdirection. If it's anything like the cervical vaccine programme it will end up cancelled, delayed,postponed, whatever. It will be an interesting couple of months though.

On an aside, I had heard that they were going to rank the colleges and degrees awarded. So that somewhere that hands out sweet FA Firsts will be better than those (that) college that hands them out like skittles-you all know the one!!

Good luck to all final years, at least I kow who ever becomes my intern will be bloody good. I'd hate to be stuck in clonmel for a year. Yikes!!!

It's intriguing to me Narkius, which college you are actually referring to. If your knowledge of 1st class honors degrees allocations amongst colleges is based on anything more than hearsay, I'd certainly love to hear it. As a final med in RCSI, which is presumably the college you and the college everyone else labels with the same brush, I'd dearly love if hundreds of 1st class honours degrees were handed out. However, that's far from the case.

Being a grad student and seeing the broad distribution of honours degrees in my course at another dublin university, I can honestly say that the distribution of 1st class or even honours degrees is broadly in line with the other colleges. In many of the years graduating during my time at the college, there has often been no 1st class degrees handed out.

Apologies for going off topic on the thread, but it bothers me when people pull the "RCSI hands out 1st's like toilet paper" bull. It's misinformed and smacks of pedantry and bitterness of some sort. Unless of course you are referring to a college other than RCSI, in which case I take the above back....

You can guarantee that there would be legal action from student's/colleges if degrees were to be graded in terms of value, i sincerely doubt that's going to happen. It's still up in the air about how the exact application system is going to work this year, apparently details are going to be formally announced in the next week or two.

chocfan

The HSE have (finally!!) released details of how the new matching system is going to work

http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/Publications/corporate/etr/Ireland's%20Interns%20Guide%20to%20Intern%20Training%202010%20Part%201.html

Some of the main things:

1. The country is basically going to be divided into regions with the training in each region being organised by the University which had previously been connected with hospitals therein (so...no real change there)

2. What is different is the actual application process whereby all interns must apply directly to the HSE and specify which jobs they want to match in.

3. Something else new is that interns may now have the chance to work in areas such as General Practice and Anaesthetics (this would be new for my area anyway-not sure if people had this chance before)

4. Copied and pasted this because I thought it was interesting and might answer some of the questions raised in this topic. Personally I think it's very fair:

"A national ranked list of applicants will be prepared based
on medical degree marks of applicants. The centile rank6
of each applicant in their final class will form the primary
ranking criterion. Centile rankings of all applicants from
Irish medical schools will be provided directly to the HSE
by the medical schools"

5. Anybody from any university may apply to another area e.g. a Galway grad can apply to what's now the Dublin/North East area (RCSI affiliated hospitals) and it will all be based on centiles. It does specify however that they're trying to keep people within the same area for the 12 months so it won't (in the vast majority of cases) be possible for an intern to work in Galway for the first 6 months and Dublin for the second 6 months.

Part 2 of this Guide is coming out in a few weeks (so they say!!) and will have more info on exactly how the process will work

That's the main gist of it. Need to read it properly myself but said I'd put up the link in case people wanted to browse through it

Susie-O-

it's great to actually see it in writing, thanks!!

drrkpd

Sounds fine-in theory but this is an organisation with a great history of "success" and it can't even keep Prof Tom Keane as it's new C.E.O.
When NHS started similar training scheme in UK was a DISASTER!!!
You MUST work as an intern to qualify as a doctor-then and only then have you completed training.
I would be very nervous until it actually works!!!!!!