To consider studying medicine at 43?

[PurpleOrchid42]

And with 2 ND kids, aged 6 and 2? Is this completely unrealistic? Or is it possible to live that dream?

Do you like animals? You can do a graduate vet medicine course in 4 years at Bristol or the RVC and this is fairly flexible with lots of online lectures for the first 3 years then just 1 year of vet hospital rotations. I know people who have done this course with kids/newborns. When you qualify as a vet you can do surgery/problem solving/a wide variety of things without specialising or further training. You can choose where to live in the country (doctors are sent anywhere) and many vets work a 4 day week/there’s much more opportunity to work part time

Yeah, you're saying it takes 17 years to be a GP... that's absolutely wrong! My sister was a GP by the time she was 28 🤣 so it's more like 10 years.

But ultimately I agree. Im probably too old. Especially when you add the impending menopause into the mix 😬

Or physician assistant, if you want to work in a hospital?

If you want to do Nursing, do Nursing - not because you see it as a route to being an ANP.

All the ANPs I know are passionate about being nurses. And had years of experience before ANP training.

It isn't necessarily going to be quicker. And no-one is going to send a newly qualified nurse on an ANP course, still less appoint a newly qualified ANP with barely any experience as a GP partner.

I have two ND children and was an HCP myself in a former life. Medical students and junior doctors are under a huge amount of pressure and I have seen many crumble, even without the responsibility of children to juggle.

It's not just the hours (which are absolutely brutal), it's the intensity of the workload, juggling exams and assignments with shift work and being on call, being expected to commute ridiculous distances to placements, being called in at short notice (often zero notice) to cover so your plans are always disrupted. I can't imagine how anyone in that situation would be able to provide the stability and consistency that an ND child needs unless there was another parent at home full time.

There's a huge exodus from the vet profession at the moment, it's a much more flexible option but make sure you're fully aware of the current state of the profession!

I'm not interested in being a partner in a GP practice! I'm just looking at a change of career, and what is possible and what isn't.

I definitely recommend you look into OT. Problem solving is our bread and butter, this is literally what our job entails - figuring out why the person experiences functional difficulties and coming up with the ways to enable them to improve their quality of life. I always say to my kid that it's like being a detective. If someone comes to me saying they can't tie their shoelaces, I can come up with dozens of reasons why they might struggle with the task, do functional assessment to test my theory and then we get to problem-solve around their specific functional deficits. You just need to end up in the right specialism (you couldn't pay me enough to work in ortho or wheelchair services).

Thank you. Yes, it's not looking possible is it? What a shame!

Definitely bad idea to train to be a doctor. I'm the same age as you and couldn't imagine starting out now and night shifts in 5-8 years time. Look at physician associates. Short training and better hours.

Look at AHP roles. Lots of autonomy, much more independent problem solving, diagnostic assessments and management planning. Generally more family friendly hours. Physio, OT, SLT, radiography, dietetics, pharmacy, podiatry etc - most are 3 yr courses and straight into working as a band 5.

Thank you, sounds a lot more sensible!

It has been done by people of your age (and older), and with children of similar ages, although I obviously don't know about degrees of neurodivergence. But everyone is different and everyone's circumstances are different. Ultimately it comes down to how organised you are; but once school-age children are a factor, your control over how organised you can be diminishes.

I would also be inclined to point out that you wouldn't be earning anything until you're 48, and then a fairly low salary for a few years after that: your lost income and lack of pension contributions will be a major issue 20 years down the line.

Given that your motivation is to change career and be involved in some way in patient care, it's worth looking at all the alternatives: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles.

OP I don't know much about the training pathway or antisocial hours admittedly but pharmacists are highly skilled and knowledgeable and also do lots of problem solving. Some are also independent prescribers. The ones I know in the hospital tend to have very specialist knowledge and work very much alongside the rest of the team.

Consultant anaesthetist here. I would also advise to really think it through. I’m sure your husband can remember how gruelling medical school and foundation training were.
Your shortest path would be four years graduate entry, two year foundation posts (these are allocated nationally with no guarantee that you would be placed close to home ) Then compete for speciality training posts. The shortest training scheme is three years for GP (competitive entry with no guarantee of it being close to home) My own speciality training is seven or eight years years - guess what it is competitive entry with no guarantee you will be placed close to home! One of the trainees I’m currently supervising went to med school in Scotland, moved to the south west for the first stage of anaesthetic training and after passing the necessary exam has moved to Wales for the later part of their training. Made much easier by still being single. All of the Royal Colleges and Specialty associations will have information on their websites about the career paths.
I still love my job despite the trials of working in what I fear is a dying NHS. I however feel it would be extremely unrealistic for you to take this on beginning in mid 40s. I do know a few people that finished medical school in their forties but all were free of your family commitments. All have struggled massively with shift working and juggling postgraduate exams once in training posts in their late forties.

Thank you for that. I've been a SAHM for the last 6 years, so the financial side of things isn't an issue. I'm not willing to go back to teaching (done with that) and want something that challenges me and uses all my skills, the way I felt teaching did, when I first began my career.

there was a recent post in a similar vein, not sure if you can search it but there was 100s pages of people (mainly medical professionals) telling this woman she was absolutely ridiculous to contemplate it...

I also have 2 ND children, a bit older, and they'd struggle with the crazy hours and lack of structure to my job. Also I'm 51 now and peri menopausal - many days I feel like a zombie with foggy brain and generally shattered - I couldn't go into work full time like I used to so WFH 3 days and 2 days in the office - my colleague is a consultant doctor, same age as me, and she's constantly stressed and never gets a good break
Honestly, I wouldn't for these reasons
Good luck if you chose to do it through

Just today I was thinking of a way I could move to America and do a prestigious MBA in my mid-30s and child-free. I concluded that it was a ridiculous idea! 5 years of medical school in one’s mid to late 40s is just as silly, I’m afraid.

I can empathise though - I would love an intellectual challenge and I do miss studying. I dream about the excitement of starting a new degree with like minded people.

I would look at something lower key…I’m currently trying to get a ND teen through GCSEs and it’s a job in itself! I think you have to try and project what home life is going to be like in another 10 yrs for you, I had no concept of what teenage life would be when my own kids were 6 and 2 respectively! Perhaps see a careers advisor, I’m sure there are many rewarding careers you could move into with the qualifications you already have.

I feel like I post the same doom and gloom on all of these threads…

Don’t do it. Medical school is the easy bit. Working as a doctor in the NHS is frequently dreadful - you’re unable to give a decent standard of care as the system consistently undercuts you. You’re treated like a child. You have very little control over your life - where and when you work for example. You’re not seen as an actual person by the NHS/HEE but a name on a rota who can be moved around at whim. I’ve had colleagues who were denied leave for their own weddings (I was denied leave for my grandpa’s funeral). Or who were given a weeks notice that their next job was not where they were told it would be but is in fact in another hospital hours away from where they’ve arranged to start renting etc. Look at the doctor forums on Reddit for more horror stories (or all the previous threads on here about retraining).

The conditions are increasingly awful and the pay does not match the level of responsibility - hence why we’re striking, emigrating or just plain quitting in huge numbers. At one point I felt like I started every interaction with a patient with an apology for something that wasn’t really my fault. Accepting abuse from patients and relatives is routine (and what I’ve faced is nothing compared to what my non-white colleagues have received). I’ve also seen quite a lot of staff bullying. Even the shorter training programmes like GP would still require you to be working a full on call hospital rota (and it seems to be a national pastime to hurl abuse at primary care at the moment). Plus exams don’t finish with medical school so whatever you choose training wise you’ll need to juggle your family with the hours and then coming home to revise (your exams will cost you thousands of pounds to sit too).

I’m in a non-clinical specialty now and I suppose I’m happy - it still isn’t worth what a medical career has done to my mental health.

I’ve been privileged to be there for some of the most important moments in peoples lives and I do appreciate how lucky I am to have had that opportunity but I wouldn’t do medicine if I had my time again. The good in no way outweighs the bad (although medical school itself was fantastic).

To be honest I struggle to recommend any career in the NHS but I’d look at allied health roles - perhaps something like occupational therapy or genetic counselling - the NHS website has some great careers resources. How are you with maths/programming? Bioinformatics is going to be a huge growth area for the future (although it’s not a clinical/patient facing role there are still a lot of interesting problem solving aspects to it).

I certainly can’t agree with this post enough.

Reading through I see someone has just mentioned genetic counselling - depending on what you find interesting that could be an area that you might enjoy and there's certainly increasing demand.

I'm roughly the age you would be doing foundation posts if you went down this path, and have recently tried getting back into clinical work having fallen out of it when my children were babies (long story). In applying for jobs I'm acknowledging that getting back into formal training (I'd got as far as postgrad exams) is unrealistic for me at this point, if I can get anywhere I'd be hoping for a part-time staff grade somewhere. But I absolutely recognise the drive to be useful somehow.

Good luck finding a sensible route forward for your only personal satisfaction.

Hell no . I’m a 45 year old consultant.

How about an optician?