To want to go to medical school at 37?

[MilanHilton]

I’m 37, married with two nursery aged children. Husband and I both earn £45k each so we live comfortably but not well off.

My medical care when I was pregnant was atrocious and the NHS was negligent (they admitted it). Which really got me thinking… I want to be a doctor that LISTENS to women so that what happened to me won’t happen to another lady.

I know I’m old, and coming from a non science background I’ll have to do 6 years in medical school and then extra training to be an OBGYN. Looking at the junior doctor pay bands it is going to take me years to get back to my current salary. Not to mention needing to do shift work and the stress of it all.

Financially it will be a tight decade and by the time I finish uni, the kids will be towards the end of primary so hopefully life will be easier. I’ll be mid 40s when I finish medical school so will still have another 20 years of working still.

AIBU for considering putting my young family through a decade of financial and emotional stress with the hope that I’ll earn more in the future? Is it worth the stress?

AINBU - go be a doctor! You’ll save lives (sometimes)
AIBU - that’s too much work and financial turmoil, even if you become a doctor you’re not going to address the chronic lack of resource in NHS

i don’t think i can recall an Op that has ever so successfully managed to combine quite as this Op has done so

• ignorance
• lack of empathy
• arrogance

Wow! Are you doing 6 years or accelerated? Assuming 6 then you'll be early 50s before you start foundation. You'll unlikely never make it to consultant. Would you mind telling us why you are doing this beat your goal is

PAs will be a flash in the pan - once the lawsuits flood in, their scope of work will be restricted back to what it should be. Govt only like them because their qualification can't be used abroad, and they have very limited value in the private sector, so they are stuck in the NHS, unlike these pesky doctors who know their international value. I wouldn't suggest that anyone start a PA course now.

She’d make a brilliant T&O surgeon then! (Half joking 🙃)

If someone's interested, there's no harm in looking at whether they could make it work.

For example, a growing number of universities and hospitals have on-site childcare options, contacts with local childcare providers, flexible working.

I manage fine as a doctor with DC, other family commitments and no childcare other than what we pay for (and which is also limited by DC's age and needs).

There are always challenges and sacrifices, and it could well be that the OP decides it's not right for her, but age and being a parent aren't automatic exclusion criteria. If she really wants it and can get a place to train, there are ways to make it work. Whether the cost:benefit analysis of those ways works for OP is up to her to decide.

Every single person that goes into medicine/nursing/nhs does it to listen and care for patients.
Even if you retrain to make a difference, it’s the system that you will have to work within and adhere to. That’s what causes people’s bad experiences/low morale/staff burnout etc.

I’m 37 and looking to get out of the nhs not into it.
I was a trainee nurse who wanted to give back etc and came up against the system. It’s insulting to staff to think they don’t go into it to listen to patients in the first place. You really are naive about what the nhs working system entails.

I disagree. These will be the staff deploying AI tools for clinical decision making. They may be replaced down the line with even cheaper staff, sure, but I don't think we'll be bringing back doctors in droves, lawsuits or not. We've been living with unsafe conditions for patients and bad decisions for years already. Bad press? Rename something or fire someone.

were you studying and training whilst working and with two very young children?

@withthischoice you've just described very close to my husband's situation actually. Working in healthcare, studying for a degree and being a dad. There are sacrifices to be made, but for our family, the benefits outweighed the costs and we make it work.

Are you going to help look after her children while she pursues her new career path. I knew a woman on benefits with children to do medicine and train to become a doctor.

Do you have those qualities?

with regard to some issues…. possibly. Could not rule it out and indeed nor could anyone.

this being the Op’s

Do you have experience, voluntary or otherwise, of working in a hospital setting?

I was on the same path until I actually stepped foot in a hospital for work and realised it wasn't for me - or indeed probably anyone, under current NHS conditions.

sounds like an inspiring fictional drama made for TV film

Well I think you get the picture OP. It’s a no. If it helps, I’m a doctor and when I gave birth, I told my DH I wanted to retrain as a midwife. Perhaps it’s a post-birth delirious thing.

PPs have shared why it’s a terrible idea (that sounds cruel but I mean the training and the job sadly now are terrible). I’ll only add, it’s more than likely that you’ll never even get into medical school. You need to be academically excellent and then some. I don’t feel this way about myself although I was the brightest child at my primary and secondary schools (by objective measures). At medical school, I felt stupid. I was in the third quartile academically for most exams.

And do you have £100,000s to throw at this? Considering the loss of income and costs of studying - can you afford it?

As many have said, life can be very miserable at the other end. I’ve worked 100 weeks, endless night shifts, been bullied, assaulted, watch people die, made mistakes that haunt me, cried everyday on the way to work. It has been so traumatic. It is not worth it, certainly not in your position. Probably not for an 18 year old without dependents either. Not going to medical school is the best thing that could happen to you.

the degree and training to become a doctor?

I have studied for a masters in work and young children.

I am under no illusions that it would be the same as doctor training

I have no real desire to reach consultant level. I have no need to. My children will be grown and I have only myself to financially support. I might undertake specialist training or I might not. My only goal is to practice medicine.

There a lot of other better ways to cope with post childbirth ptsd.

Given that both my husband and I are doctors, I'm well aware of what's involved in medical school and post-grad training. As a trainer of medical students and junior doctors, I'm well aware of the challenges people face. As someone who pretty much self-funded 2 degrees themselves, while working part-time and being a carer for a good chunk of that time for two elderly and eventually terminally ill relatives, I'm aware that it is hard to juggle these things.

I'm not saying it's easy. But the fact that we're making it work, as are quite a few other people, means it's possible. Age and family aren't automatic barriers to career changes and studying.

Out of interest, was yours and your husbands degree non medical related?

although had the OP confirmed she does have a degree?

that is seriously impressive @Scirocco

So you were already a doctor pre children
Post young children your husband embarked on a career change to become a doctor and held down a job too whilst studying?

And now both of you are doctors?

This in itself isn't a reason for applicants not to bother. You just have to make a good case for yourself and work hard on the entry exams and have as good a chance as any.

Not discounting the other points well made but on admissions it's a stepwise process rather than one big ring that you throw your hat into.

I took part several workshops for extra confidence before getting my offer and wouldn't say that all of the applicants were well prepared for interview. Not to say they wouldn't get there eventually but I feel that mature students can have an advantage in that respect, especially when they've worked at a fairly senior level such as the OP.

Of course the getting in isn't the hard bit.

We both have medical degrees and our other degrees and qualifications are almost all related to medicine (with the exception of a couple of random things we did for fun along the way).

I have had students and trainees in similar situations to the OP, and it's hard but can be done. I'm not saying it's the necessarily what OP should definitely choose to do - it may not be right for her and her individual family circumstances.

One thing that I think is crucial though, is to have a partner who is supportive and knows what they need to do to make things work.

Thanks! We're both doctors now, he's doing yet another degree to change to a different role in medicine (still as a doctor but doing something a bit different that really requires another degree as well). We've got one living DC, who's not quite 2 and is an absolute whirlwind (our other DC isn't here anymore). Our childcare is what we pay for, there's nobody else that we would expect or be able to ask.

It works because we have the same approach to work and family, and an organised framework within which we can accept some chaos! And I think we're genuinely 50:50 in terms of work, parenting, household management, etc.