To not want DD to become a doctor

My son is 14 and in year 9 at school. He’s adamant that he wants to study medicine, I’m very proud of him and will support him however I can.
Under no illusion it will be an easy ride though!

Not a chance. Only Chat-GPT4 and Sber’s Salut in Russia has passed a medical exam, both give dreadful advice and can’t diagnose correctly. It is a lot longer than a couple of years and even then, only for basic stuff you see a pharmacist for would be my bet.

My friend is a consultant anaesthetist and it looks like a good lifestyle and she earns a very good salary. She works part time and her husband is a stay at home dad with a pocket money-type business. She's been able to take some extended career breaks, and also work abroad.
However, she was flat out studying and was very single minded about it, and has only now emerged out the other side at nearly 40.
I certainly think its a great route for a young person to go down. It's hard, but the entire working world is utterly shit these days - every career has been ruined by budget cuts, "lean" methodologies, metrics, monitoring, performance appraisals and so on. There's not many great alternatives.

It's terribly competitive now. Just the UCAT has become v important in admissions. Chemistry and Biology keeps all options open but you don't need both - Newcastle don't need either of them !

In the U.K. Doctors are under paid and under appreciated
if she is bright enough to get into medicine (3 As) there are other challenging careers which pay far better.

Especially as the vast majority of doctors are GPs and that sounds like a real mess of a job these days.

However. If it is her calling leave her to get on with it.
She will need to study hard. Have appropriate extra interests and work experience. And she will need resilience. Buckets of it.

family of doctors here. I am not a doctor. However I would not recommend my career. (Big 4 professional services).

I would recommend banking or city law for a trial 10 year stint and then can do something else if she gets bored of it!!

whatever she studies does not define her or limit her. So do what she loves.

One of the great things about being in the UK is that you can study history or archaeology and then start a career in financial services or law!!!!!

medicine is definitely a calling tho. So let her listen to that if it calls her.

This is so sad, are you in the NHS ? In Ireland we stay as long as possible and then a lot of us go on to teach which I hope to get into soon.

Emergency medicine consultant here. Switching to Emergency in paeds soon.

She will love it if she has the right personality for it.

I always say to parents when they ask me, would you say no to a son ? Please let her thrive.

If it is her calling she should follow it.

I work in intensive care. It is certainly a stressful job, and the impact on my life, relationships and health (physical and mental) has been significant. But it is insanely rewarding. There are people, including children, who are alive because I put everything I have into training and improving over about 20 years. It took all of my time and most of my money. It was
worth it.

ETA if being a doctor is for her, no other health care profession will suffice. It’s not the same as being a dentist, nurse, midwife, pharmacist etc etc. totally different and not interchangeable.

Can you really do this? In the olden days you had to do physics, chemistry, biology A levels to have a chance of reading medicine! (It was terribly competitive even back then.)

Funnily enough just before I read this I was thinking about how bullied I had been in my career.
I am a Dr, I come from the days of a 1 in 3 with internal cover, it was mostly brutal and I have spent my entire career being bullied by arrogant vile people (both men and women but mostly men) I feel like I could fill this thread with examples that would horrify you. A lot of my jobs I loved, work was awful but great fun at the same time, I’ve met so many lovely patients (and a few colleagues) and hope I helped them. I’ve worked over 120 hours a week (in a job that only paid for the first 70) and spent weekends looking after over 200 patients. I don’t eat at work for my entire first week as a house officer and used to know most of my patients hospital numbers off by heart! I crawled my way up that greasy pole to become a consultant in a London teaching hospital, had a baby who needed to spend time in NICU and my trust advertised my job and replaced me with a recent immigrant from Pakistan. (There were at least 3 new female consultants they had done that to in that year alone!) That person wanted to take extended leave back home before they started and the trust asked me to fill in until they were back. The trust after 5+ years spent the following 10 hounding me to repay my maternity pay.

I have found this quite hard to write and am in fact in floods of tears so please consider being kind if anyone feels like responding directly. (I’m all for free speech but I probably need some counselling!)

I think I would be pretty devastated if any of my kids wanted to become a Dr.

To he honest in this day and age it will be a waste of so many years as it will be taken over by AI, not to mention the fact that mainstream medicine is a business and apart from emergency medicine it has nothing to do with health, it is pretty much sick care.

You could say about that most medical specialisms though, no? A proctologist looks up arses all day. I don’t like touching strangers so I avoided all healthcare professions, but if you don’t mind that, what does it matter which part you’re touching / looking at, really?!

You do know that a worthwhile and fulfilling life is not necessarily an easy one? Is the most you wish for your child, 'that she have an easy life". Maybe that is not her wish

Obviously being a doctor is not for everyone and it looks really hard to me ( I can't think of many careers i am less suited to) but many doctors do not regret doing their jobs, even if it is hard

By all means your daughter should as informed and prepared as possible but maybe she will love being a doctor. Alternatively she may not like it but won't know that until she tries. If it is a dream of hers, she should pursue it if she can and if she wants to.

Not sure why work/life balance is better - most Consultants work PT.

I couldn't be a dentist - it obviously pays well but can you imagine staring into people's mouths all day?! Urgh! It makes me feel quite nauseous. Also, it has to be incredibly dull after the first few years. Teeth are teeth.

One of my best friends is an anaesthetist, she’s a consultant now and works 4 days a week. She really, really loves her job. There are so many routes your daughter could go down - I’d definitely encourage it; she’s clearly bright, and it’s great she’s showing a passion for something so early too (I’m in my 40’s and I’m still not entirely sure what I want to be when I grow up 🤣)

I have a lot of doctors in my family. They work crazy hours for the first 2 or 3 years post qualification then it becomes normal hours - much less than you'd work for the same money in the private sector. An awful lot of doctors work part time too because the salary and pension is great. And then most retire much earlier than private sector too Other than the first couple of years of crazy hard work, its a fabulous career. I can't imagine why any parent would not want their child to be a doctor!

What cities?

@HelenHywaterNo job is NO debt. You must know that!

Plus the training positions will get sorted out. For anyone looking in the future, it’s usually a dead cert for a job. Unlike law and just about any other degree where thousands go for the jobs. The over supply of law grads is frightening. Australia probably doesn’t want them. Medicine is more portable and gives the best financial return of any degree. (Ifs data)

Working part time is normal as is retiring earlier than everyone else due to their massive pension pot: tax payers put around 25% contribution into the pension scheme so we do say thanks with our money. Multiples of other pension contributions. The self employed get £0.

Why would you put DD off? Short working life if you want it and part time readily available. Get through the first 10 years, and it’s better paid than most and you can work privately too. Consultants in nhs start on £110,000. She might get that in another job but equally might not get anywhere near it! Encourage her to do what she would like to do.

Also agree with this, especially if she wants to work abroad. Where I live, dentists earn $500k-$1m pa for a 9-5, essentially. Tonnes of scope for part-time work too. Not sure on UK salaries but I imagine they’re healthy too.

I think if your DD is determined to go down this route, she should as PP have said get as much information /work experience/ speaknto those already in post. She needs be aware just how hard it will be for at least 10 years (so med school/foundation and at least 3 years specialty)

My DD’s plan was to be a PE teacher, and studied Sports and Exercise Science at Birmingham. She decided in her final year that she wanted to be a doctor. As parents we just said ok if that’s what you want. She worked a year as an HCA, and was lucky enough to get on a graduate medicine course at Warwick- again chemistry not required.

She suffered badly with anxiety and depression throughout her med school
years and at times we wondered if she’d make it through. Her 1st foundation year was equally horrendous and she reduced her hours to cope. She never wanted to give up although we worried if she was doing the right thing. In her 2nd year things fell into place a bit more - I think helped by having better mentor/consultants who werent just there to belittle the F1s and 2s. She did another year in A&E, whilst deciding what specialty she was interested in.

She is now in her 2nd year of Psychiatry and loves it. She said a while back that for all the challenges she’s faced she absolutely loves her job. How many of us can say that?

I wish your DD all the best whatever route she takes

Tbh judging from the people I know, she'd be better off being a dentist. Much better work life balance and considerably more money.

It’s her life, not yours.

Do not persuade her to do something that she doesn’t have her heart set on.

There are lots of doctors in my family, mostly women, and they all seem to enjoy it, particularly the flexibly and scope for part-time work as compared to other careers. I’m in Finance and not one client-facing professional in the whole organisation works part-time.

I think you should be proud that your daughter is ambitious and wants to pursue a demanding but rewarding career.

Tbf medical doctors are going to be one of the career paths that is going to be pretty safe from AI....

But most of all its not something she's justvconsidered on a whim, she's showing several year long interest, I think if she feels it's her calling, she should go for it. Also, there's lots of related branches of medicine and biology along the way that she might decide to persue.