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

no middle ground between £35k and £200kplus.

Rightio! 😂

Yes

I think there could well be a bit of the little green eyed monster here.

of an anonymous posters waffling on about her salary from thirty years? Nope, and i’d be surprised if anyone would be

I also knew a PA who used to tell everyone he was a doctor, and when challenged he said he did the same job as an SHO so was "basically a doctor". So apparently that's another benefit.

WTAF are you talking about? And your posting history, all of about two days and mainly about varicose veins? Stick to what you know 😂

jamsandwich1

When people say 'You clearly have no idea' I know immediately that this is a person who can neither reason properly nor give a rational argument.

If you have to start your argument by being downright rude and downright presumptuous and downright wrong, then any points you make following that are not going to be credible.

If Junior Doctors are all saying that their job is not worth doing, I despair for the future of our Medical Care. Why did they take up the career in the first place if they are telling others not to do it?

The difficulties of being a Junior Doctor are well known to me.

If someone wants to take up a Medical Career I encourage them to find out all they can and go for it. Unless we encourage good, highly motivated people who want to improve the experience of Patients, we shall have no Health Service at all.

The miserable and dismal attitude of the Junior Doctors who are discouraging the OP from this career need to look long and hard at themselves. What have they done to improve the situation about which all we ever hear are their eternal whinges?

I have tried to sympathise and looked hard online to find out what these harsh working conditions are. I read a couple of terrible examples that nobody should have to tolerate, indeed I would not make my dog live under those conditions. But Doctors who are fresh from the exam room and barely ready to be set free alone are none the less left to cope with copious numbers of Patients. It seems that the Union, the BMA or any Body that should be getting things right for them has let them down. In so doing they have severely let down the Patients. Because now the Junior Doctors are walking out on them.

Maybe it's time the Patients asked for a properly responsible structure of care that they could always trust to be in place whether it be Saturday night or Tuesday morning. Each person at every level should know what they can expect to experience in their job. Things like having no chairs in their office are ridiculous. Such basic needs must be sorted out.

But why are Doctors not being pro-active about such things? Just walking off the job, in January of all the times of the year, is blatantly holding the country to blackmail. It has reduced the level of respect which Doctors used to automatically receive from the public.

I hope and pray that people like our OP are as committed as she it to improving the Patients' experience and for that reason fight to make the job viable.

Just telling people not to do it is simply deplorable.

Honestly don’t do it. It’s something I really really regret and if I could go back and change it I would but I went into it over 15 years ago when the nhs was much better. You will earn less than you earn now and accumulate a mountain of debt

, I really don't give a toss what you find compelling or otherwise. . it would seem not to be the case 😱 !

Doctors pay scales. For a 40 hour week (although mostly work 60+). No say on where you live in the country, move every 4-6 months, endless exams which you have to pay for, can't always get leave (including for own wedding). Understaffed, over worked and now not even valued. And we wonder why they are saying don't do it. Most are planning to leave for countries that do value them. But hey, we can offer some nice claps.

£8billion cost of scrapping IHT. £1 billion the cost of FPR. Can anyone see the issue ?

I just wondered how much posting history you actually had given that you were calling out mine. I also just realised you didn't grasp that the £35k I mentioned was at secretarial/personal assistant level rather than a managerial consultant grade. I don't engage with stupidity. Back under your bridge now please. 😂

Heavens! 😬

So I used to be an ICU nurse, working in very close proximity to a range of medical Drs at all levels, and I went through a phase where I wanted to take the next step on my path and considered training to be a Dr, I was fortunate to be able to speak to many colleagues and get their views, ask for their experience, any tips.

Long story short, I went into IT. I went to university, did a degree in computers and went into IT.

Don't do it.

For a start; a red brick university makes a difference. Not wanting to assume, but I will; you're not rocking up at Cambridge or Oxford at 37 and being accepted, so you're not going to graduate from a red brick, this will impact your ability to get placements both during your training and after. The medical field is hugely hierarchical and your history makes a difference..topside from that is the timeline; to start you have to do 7 years training, then another couple as a junior house officer, then onto senior house officer which is another 5, so we are already at 13 years and you're not on 40k yet and you've probably not had a solid 10 hour sleep for the last 10 yrs and you're knackered and half dead; is that putting you somewhere near retirement? 🤔

I know people who have trained later in life and not regretted it. Enough time for a lucrative career.

@toomuchfaff Uni makes no difference to placements these days. It's all done Uni blind. In fact getting your first job is now done by giving everyone a random number and just allocating that way.

10 years ago I would have said go for it. But in the current NHS I would most definitely say don't.

You won't be able to do the job you train for. Your idealistic view of what you could provide to patients isn't a reality in the NHS anymore.

Train to be a nurse or midwife. Three years training, which isn't easy but definitely worthwhile. You could be adult (general) nurse, children's nurse, mental health or learning disabilities. Mental health nurses can work with women with PND and other issues. It might take you a few years after qualifying to get to a band 6 or 7 (although I inow someone who was a band 7 maybe 3 years after they qualified)

The PA could be prosecuted for saying they are a dr. But I told one of our nurses that the PA she was working with was a PA and she insisted in referring to her as a dr. So if the hospital staff don’t know the difference between drs and PAs there isn’t much hope for the general public.

@toomuchfaff your numbers are slightly out.

Medical school - 5 years is pretty standard with 4 year graduate entry courses available.

Foundation training - 2 years (F1 and 2).

After F2, lots of different paths open up...
Specialty training can be 6+ years to get to CCT, more if you need additional qualifications or experience to be competitive at interviews for consultant posts.
But, GP training is 3 or 4 years.
Clinical fellowships can be available straight from F2 as well as throughout training.
LAT and LAS posts can be available.
Specialty doctor jobs start becoming an option after 2 years of specialist experience which can include LAT or LAS posts.

People don't have to graduate from Oxbridge to do well. Most doctors don't go there, but still do well. Personally, I'm not a fan of their degree model, but some people like it, so it's good to have options.

We're a lot kinder on junior doctors now than in the past, with rotas including rest days, shorter blocks of nights, encouragement to take annual leave, etc. All the things we didn't have! And there's much more understanding of how different people with different backgrounds can bring different but equally valuable skills. Some of the best trainees I've worked with have been people who did graduate entry.

I did just end up doing a 48 hour on-call recently though, so it is still a pretty big commitment and not right for everyone in terms of lifestyle.

@Itsdifferentnow “If Junior Doctors are all saying that their job is not worth doing, I despair for the future of our Medical Care. Why did they take up the career in the first place if they are telling others not to do it?”

Because obviously we didn’t go into it knowing the profession and health service would degenerate as quickly and as conclusively.

When I went to medical school we hadn’t had years of austerity and deliberate undermining of the health service by the government. The health service is a shadow of its former self. It takes years to go to medical school and then complete speciality training, there have been 9 health ministers and 5 prime ministers since I personally started medical school. If I knew the system I’d be working in, how bad things would get, that the government would so conclusively bungle a historic pandemic, (and that my pay wouldn’t keep up with inflation meaning I’m essentially worth less than the doctors working when I started medical school) then I wouldn’t have entered it. I naively thought when I entered medicine that I wouldn’t be holding the hands of people dying alone wearing ppe made by a local school’s DT department because there wasn’t enough equipment to go round whilst the government got pissed and sang karaoke whilst handing out corrupt contracts.

It’s too late for me but I can let others know what it’s like. Why would I willingly encourage somebody into a job I believe has actively destroyed my mental health in a failing system so the same thing can happen to them. You might see this as deplorable or dismal whinging but how could I in good conscience encourage somebody to put them through some of the things I’ve been put through?

What have I done about working conditions? I’m on various trainee committees, I’m on college committees, I’ve been trainee rep for my specialty. Very difficult to achieve anything when the root of most issues is there aren’t enough of us. We can complain about the rotas meaning we’re stretched increasingly thinly but what will the trust do if HEE haven’t allocated them enough doctors/they can’t attract locum? Look up what happened to Chris Day and other doctors who have tried to pro-actively escalate staffing concerns. We’re currently on strike (which I’d argue is rather proactive) which you also deride so what action would be acceptable to you? I’d honestly love to know how you would act in our position.

We’re leaving because conditions are terrible, the pay is crap and (as neatly demonstrated by your post) a lot of us are fed by the resentment we face from the government, our employers and the general public.

I’ve read a lot of crap on here over the years but being personally blamed for my own terrible working conditions might be the worst yet.

No.

DOI: O&G junior doctor who had children in med school so has direct experience of juggling med school/working as a doctor with children.

Honestly - I probably wouldn't if I were you.

First you'd have to get into med school, which may or may not be your local uni. This is a challenge in itself. Then you'd be paying a fortune in tuition fees and working/studying long hours which are not greatly compatible with family life.

Then, you'd have to apply for your foundation posts which again could end up with you sent to an unfavorable location for your family. Your earnings would take a long time to get back to what they were, even if you go full time all the way through, which most parents don't as the hours are brutal and commutes often long as you have to rotate yearly. Especially if you factor in moving/commuting costs (due to rotations), car parking costs, indemnity, GMC fees, Exam fees, course fees to pass said exams, RCOG fees.

The absolute shortest amount of time that it would take you to qualify as an O&G consultant would be 9 years post medical school. It would take longer if you had any time out for out-of-program opportunities, any time "part-time" (I write this with "bunny ears" as my part-time hours have always been more than DHs hours in his full-time job.) or time out for any other reason.

It's an amazing job and I feel privileged to do it, but if I knew what I knew now before I applied, I would have opted for a different career path.

As a side note, as someone who also experienced awful care post-natally, I also try to always provide compassionate, kind and quality care so I get where you're coming from. However, if you're anything like me, it can really affect you when the system makes it impossible for you to provide care to the level that you want to.

Having just read your responses, another thing to consider: one day you could be working, extremely busy and a patient may present you with their own Googled diagnosis based off some of their symptoms. You'll hopefully explain why you don't think that's the case and what red flag symptoms to look out for. However, balance of probabilities, one day one of these patients will have got the diagnosis correct and no matter what your reasons were for not believing this diagnosis to be correct initially, the patient will believe that you dismissed them/didn't take them seriously. Honestly, no matter how empathic you are, something like this or some other missed diagnosis or human error will occur in your career. It's a good idea to think about how you'd feel and cope in this scenario.

I am moved by the urgency and fervent imploring of the Doctors here who beg our OP to reconsider her decision. She has said she will not take up this idea anyway.

What distresses me so much is that the Junior Doctors have been suffering the conditions, the worst of which certainly sounds to be the enforced constant relocating to any part of the country, which necessitates moving away from family in many cases, for a long time. I can sympathise with their strike for this reason in itself. Sadly I think the country will only look at the subject of pay and not understand 'loss in real terms'.

But surely, as highly qualified and most intelligent people, it is time to simply say, 'NO!' to the inhumane shifting around the country? I think it has gone on long enough and it's time you all spoke of it as though it were an immovable feast. Get behind the strike over this if nothing else! The system must treat you humanely. If you are to be qualified, and the country needs you to be, then tell them to treat you as human beings.

I try not to mention who I know in case someone works out who I am or to whom I refer. But fortunately this time my knowledge goes back over a few years and covers quite a lot of Doctors from different Medical Schools and cities. I remember when they were not being shoved all over the country quite like this and I am strongly aware of how they are now. It has to stop! Most of them are of an age when they want to, or have started a young family. It is just appalling to see what this does to them.
Please, all you hard-working and terribly abused Doctors, work together to stop this! Maybe get a special group on it and publish this horrible problem everywhere so that the Public know what is happening. Mothers should not be forced away from their toddlers because their job requires they work a few hundred miles away in order they keep their job! Fathers should not be forced to find somewhere to live away from their family because their job makes them move every few months. It's not like the Army, although that's bad enough, but they organise these things and it is necessary. This is unnecessary, thoughtless, indeed callous abuse of young families. The general public need to know what our Doctors go through to become qualified.

I shall tell as many people as possible and shall be writing to complain to my MP.

We shall not have a good Health Service if we abuse our Doctors like this.

I would still encourage someone like our OP, if they are really committed, to become a Doctor. Times change, and even this Forum in spreading these important facts will have moved things forward in the fight for improving the conditions under which our Junior Doctors work. Things must change.

I appreciate what you're trying to say and I agree with you. But your understanding of the training system is a bit outdated. It's been uni blind etc since 2008. SHO is 3 years now as well.
Congrats on going into IT though. I did the same.

Seems my story isn't as anomalous as I thought!