Retrain as a doctor advice

[ELK1234]

Hi

I am in my thirties and trying to get pregnant currently. However thinking of doing graduate entry medicine. I am a pharmacist myself and have worked in hospitals and gp surgerys so have a good idea of career. I applied 5 years ago and didn't get in so decided to focus o. Being good and happy in my career but I still get this wanting to do medicine.

There is a new course for healthcare professionals and so I would be able to work for 3 years part time then 2 years full-time. I have a very supportive husband.
I can't apply till I am 35 as have to have lived in scotland for 2 years.

I think i can get through the degree although am sure it's hard. However I am really worried about doing foundation years and balancing it with kids. If life goes. To plan hopefully will have one or 2 then

I am likely gone be 40 when graduate.

Is there anyone here that has done it? And can provide advice? Or any current doctor mums?.

I think i am aware how hard foundation years are as have spent lots of my career on wards!

Thankyou

Maybe Look at Physician Associate degree, OP.
Problem with medicine is the repeat multi-year 12 hour shifts as JD.
It doesn't suit families or people not in youth.

You should go for it. You can do it. I’m a HCP and was also tempted to go down that route but didn’t. I’m 38 now so I think it’s a little too late for me now but I have multiple postgraduates under my belt and currently doing one now with 2 kids under 5.

There are junior doctors with families who make it work although it’s not easy. I wouldn’t recommend physician associate because you are neither one thing nor the other really and you can’t progress as you can as a doctor.

I am nurse and do shift work - I actually find that with a DH who works office hours the 12 hour shifts are good because it’s easier to cover school holidays because I do my full time hours in 3 days.

I say go for it, provided both you and your husband are prepared to make the sacrifices needed and you have his full support.

And your age is not an issue. The best doctors I know have come to it a bit later. IMO the ultra clever young ones often flounder when doing clinical (not always of course).

Is this the Scot Gem programme? I would say definitely go for it. We have hosted student placements and it seems like a fabulous course.

I’m married to an ITU consultant. His hours are really long, to the extent that my career has definitely been wrecked by being lone parent without any flexibility on his side. I think other areas to work in are better, but your husband will need to be very flexible at times and be prepared to make sacrifices. I honestly don’t know how two busy doctors manage to bring children up!

I did medicine straight from school but had my first baby just before graduation and my second baby in f2. Applied for specialist training and had third baby in ST2 and fourth in st4. Have had 3 years mat leave in total, went part time after the third.

If you want to not have a total breakdown you need :

1. A very supportive husband, who understands that sometimes you will be two hours late home from work and takes on at least half of the sick /pick ups and drop offs etc. My husband is pretty lazy when it comes to housework. But if one of them is sick, it isn't even a discussion. He is off and I am at work.
2. Flexible, reliable childcare. Ideally with family back up for tight spots.
3. If you are doing medicine you are probably quite type A. You won't be able to do both your job and your family perfectly. Make sure you can live with that!
4. How do you feel about going part time? Fairly easy in medicine and madness everything much easier.

Good luck! You can do it if you really want to. Make sure you really do though. It is fairly glamorised as a job. But in actuality its much like anything else. Has its good bits, its awful bits and it's boring bits. I would possibly, maybe, do it again, although maybe I wouldn't - not sure, it's just who I am now? Wouldn't push my kids into it though.

I'm sure other people will talk about the hours and the night shifts and stuff.

However, bear in mind that as a junior doctor you may have less control than you would imagine over where you are working. Foundation programme recruitment is UK-wide and there are only very limited circumstances in which you can get round the application system and be guaranteed to stay in the place where you are living (not sure if Scotland is easy or hard to get in to). Then depending on what you want to specialise in you may again be in national recruitment, and some of the regions you can be allocated to are quite large, so potentially commuting long distances. GP training is usually over a smaller area. But it's very different from most other professions in this regard.

Do you know why you didn't get into medical school when you applied previously? It's certainly not impossible to retrain, but I'm not sure i'd do it. By the time you qualify your child would be in school which makes things a bit easier i guess and ltft working is common (some specialties are probably still more understanding of the need for flexibility than others though). The 'repeat multi-year 12 hour shifts' referred to by pp don't go away whether your a junior doctor or senior and is worth thinking about, but there are plenty of us who are 'not in youth' and manage it (and plenty of other HCP roles that work on 12 hr shifts). There are also plenty of doctors who've raised children whilst in training grades, and even some single parents who've done it (gasp!). Nights get harder as you get older, but you get better at the job with more experience so can run on autopilot a bit more. There are alternatives to the traditional career path of being a trainee and then a consultant, and those may have some appeal but do have their frustrations.

I'd suggest maybe doing some work experience if you haven't already (i know you've worked in hospitals and will have seen what goes on, but have you actually spent 12 hours shadowing doctors of different grades) and then see how you feel that would work with your planned lifestyle (and don't forget to think about all the extra-curricular stuff that doctors do in their off-time, like studying for post-grad exams, research, teaching, all the CV buffing that there isn't time for in the normal working day, etc). Hope that helps.

Thanks for all the messages. I think the things about location etc definitely make it hard decision. Not sure where would be for foundation yet. But theres also the thing of i keep coming back to it every couple of years. Luckily my husband would be very supportive and is non medical and financially we would be okay... I would definitely be prepared to work part time. I don't have a strong desire to be a consultant. More happy being a Gp or also interested in palliative care and maybe slowly make. It there over the years . Though I know this requires long hospital stints.thanks for all the advice x

Also yes reason was my UKCat was good but not great which is needed for grad entry.. I have straight As at school. With the new course my UKCat would get my interview. Thanks have done some doctor shadowing but not the 12 hour shift for sure. So that is an idea

I'm a staff grade (between core and Higher training). I've completed membership and am eligible to apply for higher training but am delaying as I've had one DC and expecting another. In my current post I don't work out of hours and have no portfolio requirements (the latter inevitably ended being done out of hours when I was in training). Having a child how and having completed a degree and core training, I don't think I could've done it with children. I want my family life and my weekends with my DC. However, that's me and there are plenty of women who have children and train. I think you'll have a better idea of what you can manage/balance when your LO is born. There's no way to really know what having a child is like until you have one.

What support from family do you have for childcare? A close relative of mine did medicine “late” and had twins two years post finishing her degree. Her partner is also a medic and my mum basically had to move in with them for four years to cover the nights, on calls, weird hours etc. It’s just not possible to do nursery run and bedtime when working those hours. Her twins are 9 now and she works 3 days as a GP, which she says is the maximum she could manage. She found it v v difficult in the early days - got v thin, not much time with kids and the family dynamic has changed a lot due to my mum basically bringing the kids up.

Might want to brush up on your English.

@aldichocolateyum

Might want to brush up on your English.

Wtf?

Not helpful. If OP is a pharmacist with straight A exam grades I'm sure her English is fine.

Hi,
Thankyou. Haha my typos are terrible. I should of edited that. You can't once you have sent. Anyway thank you so much good advice and it is nice to get a sense of the reality of balancing kids and medicine. Definitely lots to think about. I agree it may be best to see how I feel after having children.

OP it is really tough to have children as a junior doctor. For that reason women do often wait until the registrar years. Saying that conditions for junior doctors are better than they've ever been. There's lots of good advice upthread, especially with geography issues etc.

Might want to brush up on your English

Wtf is this comment? Why would pop up on a thread to say something so unpleasant?

@aldichocolateyum did that make you feel bit and clever ?

The geography issues are a massive pain! My maximum commute was 2 hours each way (kids in school couldn't be moved). After a 13hour nightshift I didn't get home until eleven and was out again at six.... Was brutal! You can do anything you want though, if you want it enough.

You need to make sure you want it enough. If not you will be full on miserable! And once you've trained for five years it becomes very difficult to change to something else.

I studied Medicine straight out of school, but know a few graduate entry medics. I'm not sure I'd do it at your stage in life, to be perfectly honest. Medicine is very hierarchical, and I wouldn't want to go back to being a student or F1 and being shouted at or talked down to, now that I'm a mature adult and am used to being treated with respect.

It will also require a huge amount of study, and will likely place a lot of stress on you, even if you have a supportive and flexible husband and bulletproof childcare. You probably won't see your husband and kids as much as you'd like. I've seen the stress of graduate medicine destroy two marriages...

I retrained and graduated at 30, some of the other people on my course did have kids, I think it will be hard but you've got a wealth of experience as a pharmacist so that will be a massive help. F1 and 2 were hard work & long hours and would have been very hard with kids but clearly people do it, it's not forever and you can of course go part time which would help. It will be easier with flexible childcare nearby, and I find on-site hospital nurseries sometimes have the best hours. It's an amazing fulfilling career but also incredibly tough. Really think about why you want to do it and whether you could get the same fulfilment from a specialist pharmacist career path- on ICU our pharmacists are amazing. All the best

Hi, there.

I trained as both a dentist and a doctor straight from school. I did dentistry first then medicine second.

Have you considered doing dentistry? There is a lot more autonomy in the job and you are not having to move frequently to satisfy a rota or your training. Dentistry was by far a better career for women with children than medicine because ultimately you are self-employed and therefore have more flexibility.

Medicine is very interesting, but the first few years are literally just ward work and fulfilling orders from the consultant. Oh, and night shifts. I completed both degree quickly, so I was relatively young. But this is something you would need to consider because night shifts really do take a toll on your body as you get older.

Medicine is hierarchical as another user said, but as a dentist you run your own treatments and don't have to present every patient to the reg or consultant and make your own decisions clinically.

Having done both, the lifestyle of a dentist (to me) far outweighs that of a doctor.

@ELK1234 re. palliative medicine - definitely not an easy option! It's a medical specialty so requires foundation years, IMT for 3 years (including the joys of being med reg) then 4 years as a specialty registrar before reaching consultant. Much longer if planning on doing it less than full time!

Not trying to put you off, just wanted to give you a realistic view of what a career path in that specialty can look like.

@frenchtoastie123

Hi, there.

I trained as both a dentist and a doctor straight from school. I did dentistry first then medicine second.

Have you considered doing dentistry? There is a lot more autonomy in the job and you are not having to move frequently to satisfy a rota or your training. Dentistry was by far a better career for women with children than medicine because ultimately you are self-employed and therefore have more flexibility.

Medicine is very interesting, but the first few years are literally just ward work and fulfilling orders from the consultant. Oh, and night shifts. I completed both degree quickly, so I was relatively young. But this is something you would need to consider because night shifts really do take a toll on your body as you get older.

Medicine is hierarchical as another user said, but as a dentist you run your own treatments and don't have to present every patient to the reg or consultant and make your own decisions clinically.

Having done both, the lifestyle of a dentist (to me) far outweighs that of a doctor.

I think dentistry would be a great job, if you didn’t have to put your hands and (almost) face into peoples mouths

@sammylady37

:) I've now had to put my hand in every bodily orifice...Trust me, the mouth is not that bad!