A new direction for medical education in Ireland?

In recent years, new concepts of educational theory and practice have stimulated new approaches to medical education in many countries. For various reasons, medical education in Ireland has been slow to change such that there are now increasing concerns about educational standards. In addition, Ireland currently produces too few doctors and is therefore highly dependent on overseas doctors to maintain its health service. The responsible agencies are finally about to address these problems through a major expansion of medical education coupled with a strong agenda for educational reform. While the reform process will clearly be influenced by the experience of other counties, Ireland now has a great opportunity to take innovation in medical education a step further. For example, there is now an opportunity to develop new strategies to ensure the social accountability of medical education, to increase its community orientation and to foster interprofessional teaching and learning.