Supporting medical students towards future careers in general practice: A quantitative study of Irish medical schools

Aim In Ireland there is a significant, and increasing, shortage of general practitioners. By 2025, this shortfall could be as high as 1,380, from a current workforce of 3,923. We aimed to determine the proportions of EU medical graduates from each of the six Irish medical schools who applied to the national GP Training Program for 2017-21 inclusive. Methods The Spearman rank correlation was used to examine the correlations between the proportions of graduate entrants, the number of weeks spent directly on GP placement teaching at each medical school and the proportions of applicants, to GP training, from each medical school. Results Between 2017-2021 inclusive, the average annual percentage of EU graduates applying to the national GP Training Program (n=1,302) ranged from 25-55% for each of the six Irish medical schools - a 2.2 fold difference. There was a strong correlation between the average annual percentage of EU graduates applying to the ICGP Training Program with the proportions of graduate entrants, but this did not reach statistical significance, (r=0.81; p=0.20) and no association with the number of GP placement weeks (r=0.2; p>0.50). Conclusion We found a marked difference in the proportions of EU graduates, from the six medical schools, opting for a career in general practice. Further work is required to inform how best medical schools can support the generation of tomorrows general practitioners.