This release marks a significant development in the reporting of healthcare graduate outcomes. While the previous release focused solely on graduates who studied medicine, nursing, and midwifery, this edition expands the scope to include 10 additional healthcare disciplines. These include physiotherapy, social care, occupational therapy, dentistry, and others.
This chapter provides a breakdown of healthcare graduates by nationality (Irish and non-Irish) and valid PPSN status. Outcomes in subsequent chapters are only described for Irish graduates with a valid PPSN, as explained below.
The total number of nursing and midwifery graduates of all nationalities has fluctuated between approximately 1,400 graduates and 1,600 graduates between 2010 and 2022.
The total number of medicine graduates of all nationalities increased from 783 in 2010 to 1,254 in 2022. The number of Irish medicine graduates increased from 327 in 2010 to 636 in 2022. Note that all 2012 medicine graduates from RCSI were excluded due to data quality issues. Also, statistics for pharmacy graduates before 2020 have been suppressed and were excluded from Figure 2.1.
The number of social care graduates of all nationalities increased from 897 in 2010 to 1,359 in 2022. The number of physiotherapy graduates increased from 144 in 2010 to 222 in 2022.
Female graduates outnumbered male graduates across all healthcare fields of study in 2022. Over nine-in-ten (92%) nursing and midwifery graduates in 2022 were female.
The most gender balanced field of study was medicine where 56% of 2012 graduates were female. The field of study with the greatest proportion of female graduates was speech and language therapy where 95% of 2022 graduates were female.
Figure 2.3 below shows the proportion of 2013 graduation records by PPSN validity. A number of graduates across all fields of study had a missing or invalid PPSN, and therefore cannot be matched to other administrative data sources to describe outcomes in subsequent chapters. Graduates from 2013 are shown in Figure 2.3 because there is a full decade of outcomes data available for this cohort.
Irish nursing and midwifery graduates have much higher rates of a valid PPSN compared to non-Irish nursing and midwifery graduates. In 2013, 96% of Irish nursing and midwifery graduates had a valid PPSN. This compared to 67% of non-Irish graduates with a valid PPSN. This pattern is more pronounced for medicine graduates. In 2013, 81% of Irish medicine graduates had a valid PPSN. In the same graduation cohort, only 6% of non-Irish graduates had a valid PPSN.
This pattern can be explained by the fact that a PPSN is not mandatory to register in a higher education institution in Ireland and non-Irish graduates are overall less likely to have one than Irish graduates. As the rates of missing PPSN is highly biased towards non-Irish graduates, the analysis of graduates' outcomes in subsequent chapters in this release are only calculated for Irish graduates with a valid PPSN.
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