The Irish Medical Council is the main body responsible for doctors in Ireland. In order to be able to work in Ireland, doctors are required to have a work permit – the so-called IMC license. To make the process of obtaining a license easier, we bring a detailed description of each step of registration with the Irish Medical Council in one place so that after reading the instructions, all you have to do is prepare the necessary documentation and start the first step leading to your move to the land of green, Saint Patrick and Guinness.
Preparation of necessary documentation
As proof of your medical orientation, IMC recognizes medical degrees from most of the medical faculties in the European Union. The exact type of diplomas they accept, sorted by the country, can be found here.
If you have completed your education outside the European Union or EEA, your diploma needs to be verified through EPIC. In short, you need to create an account and electronically forward the diploma and the necessary documentation that EPIC analyzes and makes a decision on the validity of the diploma, or to be more exact the compatibility of educational systems, after which you will receive information of additional steps (if necessary) to obtain a license. You can find out more about the process on the official website of EPIC.
Graphic representation of the registration process by IMC
During the registration process, the IMC will ask you to provide them with the following:
- Certified copy of passport
- A certified and translated to English copy of the original medical diploma that you obtained upon graduation from medical school
- A certified and translated copy of the original diploma of specialist training (valid only for doctors applying for Specialist Registration)
To certify the document, it is necessary to take it to the notary public and make sure that the copy contains the date of certification together with their official signature and stamp. Contrarily, the council has the right not to accept your documents as valid, which would, of course, further prolong the whole process.
Before sending needed documentation, you can scan it and upload it electronically to your profile, which could speed up the process of obtaining a license. We recommend doing the same, but the documentation has to be sent in physical form and it is best to do the same by registered mail or courier service.
In addition to the above documentation, it is also necessary to contact the competent medical council in your country to request these EU certificates:
- Certificate of Conformity (also known as Certificate of Acquired Rights) – serves for an automatic procedure for the recognition of formal qualifications of doctors in the EU and EEA for employment or education
- Certificate of Good Standing – this document, which must not be older than 3 months and must also be requested from other competent councils of the countries in which you worked, confirms the claim whether there was a conducted disciplinary proceeding against a member and whether a disciplinary measure of temporary or permanent revocation of the work license has been imposed on him
Once you receive the EU certificates, they must be certified and translated by the public notary in the same way as the previous documentation. However, it is important to emphasize that you do not send the translated and certified EU certificates yourself, but return it to the competent medical council which officially forwards them to the Irish Medical Council. For example, a doctor who finished education and is working in Croatia is going to return translated and certified copies of the EU certificates to Croatian Medical Council, which will directly send the documentation to its Irish counterpart.
Online registration
Once you have prepared all the necessary documentation and before you are going to send it to the IMC, you will need to start your registration online.
During registration, the IMC will ask you to complete a Certificate of Indemnity, which is important because of the way doctors are insured in Ireland.
In the part of registration where you need to enter the specialization, when the menu appears in which you mark the category of specialization, if you finished it in another EU/EEA member state, such as Croatia, it is necessary to mark the second point as in the picture:
Once you have completed all the necessary points of online registration, they will ask you to pay for the cost of a license creation, noting that the license needs to be created only once and it is going to fully open the door of your employment and your departure to Ireland. To find out how much would a licence cost for you, follow this link.
If you have additional inquiries about obtaining a medical licence in Ireland, feel free to contact us at our e-mail addresses or social network profiles and we will listen to you and guide you to the next step of creating a license. Good luck!
Contact us:
Email: info@incor.hr
Facebook: @incordoo