Encouraging children into nursing, care work, dentistry, teaching.

[ToHellBackAndBeyond]

With the lack of medical staff, dentists, carers, teachers and the like how many parents are actively encouraging their children into these careers?
Just curious.

I don't disrespect teachers 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oaft, actively discourage anyone from nursing or medical. The horror stories are unbelievable.

I wanted to be a dentist when I was younger. I still probably would like to, but sadly I wasn't clever enough...I needed 3 x As at A-level

NHS nurse of 23 years here with 2 DC. I am neither encouraging or discouraging anything. However my DD who is 10 is very squeamish has absolutely zero interest in health care professions at all. I have to say I am relieved, not about her not wanting to be a nurse. I have had an awesome career in nursing, with many different jobs that have given me lots of variety and diversity. I have travelled with it, to many remote places and really I would not change it for the world. Now I'm in a senior position which is a reasonable salary with a great pension. So it's not so much nursing/ medicine/ AHCPs that I would not be keen on her working as, it's the NHS. The same for teaching, I think if you want to be a teacher and have a flare for it, then it must be a wonderful job. But not so much right now in the UK where resources have been depleted so much while expectations have just gone up!

But I would never actively discourage my DC from doing anything.

I teach dental students- I think it’s a good career but wouldn’t encourage them to work in the NHS. The contract discourages good dentistry.

I told DD anything but a teacher. She's kinda half arsed considering being a dentist but doesn't really know/has a dream career in mind. We'll see where she ends up.

Some of those are good careers for emigrating.
Easy route out.

84% of dentists in the U.K. would discourage their children from persueing it as a career.
NHS dentistry is dead in the water and many are looking for a way out of dentistry entirely disillusioned by the litigation , over regulation of dentistry in the U.K. ,the ever present threat of the GDC and the year on year decrease in earnings particularly over the last 10 years.
That is not even talking about the press and general publics perception of dentists and general abuse of all members of the dental team.
we have young, newly qualified colleagues desperate to change careers as they cant face a lifetime of the stress of dentistry in the U.K.

I don't believe in trying to push children into doing or not doing.
If they want to do it that's on them. I will be honest about what I think are the good and bad points but I won't keep 'gently discouraging ' someone from what could be a career they really want and enjoy. That's just wrong and weird.

I am encouraging my dd to look at healthcare.

So that she can leave the country and go somewhere where skills and work pays.

Except for dentistry (which requires a very very long and expensive period of study) all those jobs are badly paid and overworked.

Why would people encourage them for their own kids?

The thing is as a qualified nurse she's making £100 more a month than I did as an apprentice in my first job.

So actually I'd say it's still terribly paid.

Parents are encouraging their DC to AVOID these jobs OP.

Medicine and dentistry yes absolutely. Private dentistry is interesting and Extremely lucrative and is massively in demand especially orthodontics and cosmetic dentistry. Medicine is hard work but the long term rewards are great. The others, well I wouldn’t ever have encouraged them

Like anything a big part is finding the right practice and finding what you enjoy. Avoiding NHS dentistry at all costs is the main one, training in Invisalign to supplement day to day apps is another for example. DH earns well and is happy, he used to be pretty miserable before they went fully private though.

Unfortunately the stress is not confined to NHS dentistry. It is a very stressful job as the American article below illustrates and anyone considering it as a career needs to think extremely carefully as to how they cope with stress and pressure. The article explains it well with the caveat that in the U.K. you are more likely to be sued as a dentist than anywhere else in the world and you are up to 30 times more regulated than anywhere else in the world. Dentists coming in from abroad comment on the atmosphere of fear in U.K. dentistry. https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/stress-in-dentistry-it-could-kill-you/

I've not encouraged or discouraged DS about any particular career, I've encouraged him to just follow whatever he is interested in and be mindful that if he wants a particular standard of living he needs to go into something that pays a good salary. He wants to be a vet.

Another big problem with these careers is the lack of flexibility and remote working.

Post pandemic, many other highly qualified professionals are able to work from home (for part of their working week) and juggle family life. Don’t get me wrong, there are jobs which just don’t lend themselves to remote working and this is the category but couple this with poor pay, no respect from your service users or employers. Why would we encourage our children to enter these careers?

The lack of flexibility gave me the push to move away from NHS and into private sector. 40% pay rise more than made up for the pension and I have a much better work life balance - I would have missed so many school events if I had stayed in my previous role. My only regret is not leaving sooner

I’m planning on just asking DD what she wants to do, I’d be a bit concerned if all it took was some gentle discouragement from me to influence her career choices.

I am going to advise my child not to consider any job that displays a poster asking the public to treat staff with respect.

Quite right @thecatsthecats having to put signs up 'please do not abuse our staff they are here to help you' is ridiculous!

We were advised to do this after an incident where I was physically attacked by a patient who was annoyed their dentist had been taken from work as an emergency to hospital so the patients check up was cancelled at short notice.

The health board would not warn any of the surgeries about this person who subsequently went on to attack another health worker.

Receptionists, in particular , are sworn at and abused daily .

I agree this is awful but any customer facing role would have this, sadly. Not everyone wants to work in an office somewhere.

@Lollygaggle did you get support after this? Or did you get the 'what do you think you could have done differently?'....
So annoying!

Conversely H and I are lawyers - have discouraged DC from pursuing law.

The school was encouraging this for DD1 and before that youth work.

I have to admit I discouraged both - law as sibling tried to break into that and we didn't have the contacts it also seemed an extremely poor fit for her strengths and enjoyment.

Same with youth work - poorly paid and seemed a bad fit - she doesn't enjoy being around people all the time.

Her now plans do seem a good fit for her personality and interest but jobs and pay aren't great - but DH and I have changes sectors over time so she may make it or have to do similar.

None of mine have shown that much interest in medical staff, dentists, carers, teachers