Graduate careers advice: you and your medical degree

Read our careers advice on how your medical career can develop.

Related jobs include:

• Doctor/GP
• Emergency medical technician (paramedic)
• Medical laboratory scientist
• Medical physicist
• Midwife
• Nurse
• Research chemist

Work experience

While at university you should begin building your CV and developing skills by taking voluntary work, joining medical societies or becoming an academic course or clinical representative.

Taking an ‘elective’ allows you to gain clinical experience during your course. You may decide to take your elective abroad, with many students opting to work in developing countries.

An intercalated degree adds a sixth year to your course and involves taking a year out from your curriculum to carry out research in a different subject area.

More information on work experience can be found here .

What sectors?

Most doctors work within the Health Service Executive (HSE). Take a look at the HSE Job Search for vacancies.

You can also practise medicine in such areas as:

• prisons;
• the defence forces;
• overseas aid agencies;
• hospitals;
• nursing homes;
• clinical trial organisations;
• university teaching;
• private healthcare;
• air ambulance services.

Your medicine CV

A medicine degree will equip you not just with vocational skills but with transferable skills like critical appraisal, listening, observation, decision making and logical reasoning. Such skills are essential for a doctor, but also for many jobs outside medicine.

You will also develop your ability to work well as part of a team and your understanding of your responsibilities as part of that team, which may vary from following orders to leadership. Your oral and written communication skills will also be greatly developed by writing medical reports and completing assignments.

Postgraduate study

A four year full-time general practice training post in one of 14 GP training programmes is offered by the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) for those registered with the Irish Medical Council.

Successful completion of this training will earn you a certificate of completion of training in general practice, which allows GPs to work within state schemes in Ireland and other EEA countries.

You may opt for a career outside medicine and take further vocational training in a specific area, like law, finance, management, business or teaching.

More information can be found in our Further Study section.