‘I worry that high CAO points will end my dreams of becoming a doctor’

I completed the Hpat in February and feel despondent. My performance was well below par on the day. I have always wanted to be a doctor and worry that there is no way that I will get the 730-plus points needed to have a chance of getting an offer in August. I don’t want to let my dream die. What can I do?

Firstly, there is no relationship between performance in the Hpat and suitability to be a good doctor. The Hpat was originally devised in Australia as a means of diversifying the existing composition of the then intake into their medical schools.

It was introduced into Ireland alongside the revised CAO points system for undergraduate medical entry, to break the stranglehold that repeat Leaving Certs had on admissions to medical schools at that time.

If your dream is to become a doctor, don't be put off by the Hpat process

It succeeded in its primary goal, in that almost nobody now repeats the Leaving Cert, and those that do certainly don’t do it to secure a place in medicine, as for every five CAO points they might secure in their Leaving Cert exams, it will add one extra CAO point to their score.

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Repeating the Leaving Cert has now been replaced with repeating the Hpat, at huge expense to students and parents, who spend significant sums of money on grinds, which the creators of Hpat state are unnecessary to perform to your optimum level.

If your dream is to become a doctor, don’t be put off by the Hpat process. If it’s the right occupation for you, there are numerous ways of achieving your goal.

Your belief that you performed badly in February’s sitting of the test is purely subjective. When you get your result in late June, you can still amend your CAO course list by replacing your medical degrees with alternate options, if your expectations prove correct.

The good news for those seeking places this year and into the future, is that Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris has secured significant additional funding through the Department of Health to create additional undergraduate medical places from 2022 onwards.

Option

The negotiations with the five university medical schools and the postgraduate school in University of Limerick (UL) are ongoing before these places can be offered in August, as every medical place comes with a complex range of support through training places in our health services. But every extra place created brings down the CAO points requirements.

Significantly, more Irish students are now seeking and accepting medical places in schools in other EU countries where tuition is through English

Many students opt to take medicine-related degrees, or any honours degree for that matter, in the hope of transferring into the four-year postgraduate medicine programme, offered predominantly in UL, during their degree through the Gamsat exams following graduation, provided they secured a 2:1.

Other students consider the option of applying to medical schools in Northern Ireland or Britain through Ucas. com">Ucas.com. The number of Republic of Ireland applicants who secure places through this route is less than 100 annually.

Significantly, more Irish students are now seeking and accepting medical places in schools in other EU countries where tuition is through English.

The fees vary from very high in eastern European universities, to quite modest in the northern Italian medical schools, which work with some of the best hospitals in Europe.

The problem arises for Irish students when they have to start interacting with patients while on placement, when they need to have acquired a working knowledge of the local language. See Eunicas.ie for more.

Last word, whatever fate has in store for you, if a career in medicine is right for you, it won’t pass you by.

[ askbrian@irishtimes.com ]