To think working as a junior doctors looks shit?

[Whoevercanbethere]

Watching JD on iPlayer and know that i could never be a doctor.

So much responsibility, such a busy work life and too much blood and gore.

Could you do it?

Nope.

1. I never really got chemistry at school.
2. Im really squeamish.

No, I couldn't but I do work in the NHS (in a role that most people say I couldn't do your job )

Programmes like these are heavily edited.
And anyone training to be a Dr would look into the hours and conditions before applying .

They have to love their work, intact be happy to make their life their work. They also have to have amazing memories and tenacity. The responsibility is huge, and they do make mistakes , sometimes due to tiredness. I’m really surprised the system where they can be on call for days at a time has not been changed. When I was a student nurse the new house officers would start in August, often a time when the senior staff were on holiday. It used to be called The Dangerous Month.

I have an office-based job, pressure to deliver projects, stressy colleagues etc but being a medic is a whole different thing.

70isaLimitNotaTarget Good point regarding editing. Do you think the programme does not paint a realistic picture?

Who would want to study medicine and work as a junior doctor now? Genuinely interested what the appeal is as I cannot see it. Is it a power and prestige thing still?

anyone training to be a Dr would look into the hours and conditions before applying

I’m reasonably sure this is not true^. I applied to medical school based on a year studying 16th and 17th century medical texts as part of an MA in Renaissance literature, and accidentally getting roped into a week’s volunteer work in the pilgrimage hospital Lourdes. I can hand on heart say I did not give current pay or working conditions for junior doctors a thought. Or think about how the shifts worked, or how difficult it would make family life, or the terrifying, crushing responsibility. And I was at the time five years older and theoretically wiser than most medical school applicants.

Loads of medical students go blithely into it because they like science, or want to help people, or have watched too much House, or their parents want them to, or some combination of all the above, and have no fucking clue what they’re signing up for. I’m sure some research it all carefully but I don’t know anyone who did. Most people only start to get an idea of what it’s going to be like in the last couple of years of their degree and panic like I am currently.

I couldn't these days(Did think about it when I was younger!!), so much pressure and the new contract has made it worse. It takes at least 13 years to qualify as a consultant so you must really want to do the job.

I wanted to be a doctor when I was 13, I gave up the ambition because I didn’t want to do sciencey a-levels

I can honestly say I’d never have coped as a doctor though! I have a good memory but that’s pretty much the only thing going for me in that respect. For a start, I am crap on no sleep. And emetophobic. I also have depression and anxiety and I’m sure that the stress and pressure of medicine, plus the crazy working hours would have made my mental health worse.

The amount of time junior doctors can be on call has changed hugely over the years and ,any work shifts now rather than being on call thanks to European legislation. Opinion on whether that is a good or a bad thing seems divided.

I actually had a place in medical school but gave it up when I realised just how shit working for the NHS was. There aren't enough resources to do the job properly and the pay is far too low for the amount if study and gard work that goes into it.

Money, status, and job security would make it worthwhile.

YANBU. It’s an awful job, not helped by the public perception that they know what they are getting themselves in for and are all rolling in money so should be loving every second of their stressful jobs. The blood and gore is the least of the problems.

I would be worried about anyone I cared about going into medicine at the moment (not a doctor but work with a lot of them). Being a consultant is generally no barrel of laughs either.

Perhaps somewhat fortuitously, I don't have the brains for it, but i was thinking the other day that I wouldn't want it for my children due to the terrible amounts of pressure inherent in the NHS system at the moment. But thank god there are those (not just JDs but nurses, radiotherapist, support workers and all the others) that still do. Nothing but admiration for them and what they face right now.

The programme just made their everyday experience looks so unappealing. Shit lunches, unhealthy food eaten whenever you can grab a bite, being surrounded by illness and tragedy, long, long hours and then the same again the next day and the next.

I agree 100 % with glitter trauma though that i am grateful to all medical people who work so hard and make personal sacrifices.
Just couldn't do it myself.

And i certainly don't have the brains for it.

I got as far as 2 years into a MBBS before bailing and going back to hard science.

I'm a relatively "senior" junior doctor. The hours now are not as bad as they used to be, but the job has changed and is still hard but in different ways. The old "firm" structure is pretty much gone as we do more and more shift work, so you don't know your seniors so well and there's not so much camaraderie. The NHS is creaking at the seams and you spend a lot of time rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic (or so it feels on occasion). The money isn't all that great compared with what my friends who graduated at the same time as me were earning by the time I'd graduated 3 years later - and the new contract means that it will be even less for today's new juniors. The status isn't all that - the days when everyone respected The Doctor are long gone.

It's all very well saying "you knew what it would be like when you got into it," but that's just not true for most people. Yes, on paper I knew that I'd be working nights, weekends, holidays etc - but as a 17 year old applicant I had no clue how that would actually feel and how it would affect me. But I can't imagine myself doing anything else, and I'm sure there are worse jobs out there!

Sorry, I mean friends who started uni at the same time as me - they graduated 3 years before me!

I work with junior doctors (NHS manager). It is indeed pretty shit tbh. Dd1 is a medical student and I did mKe sure she was aware of hours, pressure on family etc before applying. I try to look after 'my' doctors as best I can. They need it.

Most people who become doctors come from a middle class background.

Not watched the programme, but am close friends with someone whose ds has recently started out as a GP. I've had a flavour of the dire terms and conditions they've had to put up with for years. Yes, the pay is generous in the end, but the hours they work are still shocking, and things like not getting a say over where their placements are, so they have to keep moving house, etc., and then (with the hours) not really having much chance to settle and make friends in that new area. Then the constant exams. Plus some of the shift patterns. Really not an attractive proposition.

My DS1 considered being a doctor, and I am so glad he didn't.He started work about 9 months ago in an engineering position on a project thatwill directly have an influence all over the globe.He has just this week been offered a position his current employer is doing a big contract for, on £52K at 22 years old and he is not even in the South East.
Interesting work, comfortable office 35 hours a week monday to friday. Who would want to be a doctor?

It’s definitely a vocation. I’m a nurse and although the hours are crap and the pay is too, I always look at the baby doctors and think No way could I do that!. (To be fair, I’d never have got the grades anyway!). I’d always offer them a drink if they came to my ward at night because I knew it could be hours since they last had one. The stretches of days they have to do are crazy, the amount of work they do. If you can stick it, and progress in medicine obviously the pay at consultant level is great, opportunities to do private and Locum work but man do they earn it over the years!

I did know how shit it was before I did it but wild horses wouldn’t have stopped me. I was determined to save the world -30 years later I know that you can barely save yourself, let alone the world.
I am a GPand my job is exhausting, frustrating, desperately sad at times and also brings great joy. I wouldn’t do anything else. The glimpse you get of life is such a privilege.
As a junior doctor I was frequently in tears - often in a cupboard.

I could and I did, back when the hours were longer. I would start work at 8am Saturday morning and finish around 8pm Sunday evening. A couple of hours sleep when someone else carried the bleep for me was lovely when it happened (but rare).

We worked in teams of juniors at each level. The patients I admitted were the patients I looked after on the wards over the following days. I got to learn when I had been right and when I had been wrong. My immediate seniors (still juniors themselves) worked the same calls, helped with the same patients, had my back when I made mistakes (chewed me out for a few of them - I only made them once) - we were one team for 6 months and it helped. We ate curries at 4am, dozed on ward chairs waiting for blood results to refresh, drank endless cups of coffee made by nurses who had seen hundreds of us go through the mill (and are still there making coffee for the new ones, they deserve so much more appreciation), all the while studying still.

It’s all very well saying that potential med students research it - and you do, to some extent - but no amount of research compares to the reality. It’s like saying you should research broken nights before you have children; the first experience is never like you’ve been led to believe!

It’s much worse now with shift based systems. It seems the old idea of “the firm” is gone. My SHO and registrar pretty much held me together, and I did the same in subsequent years for my juniors.

I’d still recommend medicine as a career to my boys, if they have the desire to head down that route. I’d stay out of the NHS though, and train/work abroad.

I am a junior doctor and I 100% agree with the pp-s above. It is really hard and tiring, the weekend rota is usually only released a couple of weeks in advance so you don’t know which weekends you are working, it’s rubbish not being able to get annual leave to go to important things like weddings, and working nights sucks.

However for me the reasons I stay are: some days it’s really fascinating in a way that my friends jobs are not. It’s a huge privilege and honour for patients to tell you their troubles and to be able to assist. The reward from truly knowing you helped someone is incomparable.

My main concern is that with understaffing and other current NHS issues we have less and less time to benefit from those good bits - interesting cases don’t get discussed and learnt from as everyone is rushing to the next job, you don’t have time to listen to each patient properly so they feel like they’re not getting what they need (and we are very aware of this - you get good at reading faces) and so you don’t feel like you are making that positive difference. Add in the antisocial hours and recent pay cuts from the new contract and you can see why people are quitting. I think it’s such a shame.