Medicine at university - waste of time?

[whoosit]

There was a thread the other day about how difficult it is for UK trained doctors to get jobs here which got quite heated. I'm not trying to reignite that flame but I have a DC who is making decisions about their future and seems to have set sights on medicine. They're very high achieving academically and do competitive sports outside of school and are generally an all round good egg. My main concern isn't whether academically they can get into med school but more to ask is it not worth them doing it because there are no jobs further down the line. It shocked me to read that thread hut wasn't sure whether that was just a bit of a mad scare mongering thread with an ulterior motive and actually training to be a doctor in this country is hard but essentially there's a job at the end of it?

I suppose it depends on the motive of why someone wants to be a doctor in the first place? have a practice on Harley Street because it sounds good to their mummy and daddy's friends and their trust fund requirements, work for the NHS wouldnt be becuase of the money? and a million other reasons

Both DH and I are doctors. Our youngest DC wants to go into medicine and honestly, I wished he wanted to follow an alternative path. The cost of £50k tuition fees, plus living expenses is just the start. On obtaining the degree, to be posted anywhere in the UK to do specialist training or immigrate overseas for a sustainable lifestyle is also a concern. We both have had colleagues who committed suicide due to the stress and pressure of the job - it is not a healthy occupation. It plays havoc on your social and family life. However, it is not my choice to make. All I can do give my DC a balanced exposure to the job and support his choice. It is not a waste of time but it is a challenging and often misunderstood occupation.

I teach nurses and this is the first year the students have not secured jobs prior to finishing their degree. A few years ago they would have had the choice of 3-4 jobs each.

If it's all you want to do than it is all you want do to. I don't think I could have been happy doing anything else and DD age 18 feels the same.

I would be steering my kids away from medicine right now. It was bad before, and it's gotten worse.

I hope that things will be better in a few years, but it's a huge gamble. If your kid can get into medicine, they have far better options.

That's a very clear way to show that you understand nothing about medical training.

I’d encourage it as a ticket out of the U.K.! In your heart of hearts, do you feel that the U.K. will be able to offer your daughters generation a fabulous life or would they be better to set themselves up elsewhere? Medicine will give them so many visa options, and I think that’s a benefit that is often underestimated - the ability and flexibility to just go!
I was torn between investment banking and medicine. I chose the former, and wish I’d have chosen the latter! I’m encouraging my children to take up a ‘trade’ - be it medicine or plumbing or whatever!

Yes because all medical students think exactly the same way

I'm yet to meet one that doesn't realise that medicine is a brutal way to try to earn money, and that they would have far easier options elsewhere, if that is what they were after.

I don't understand why there are no jobs? I thought there was a shortage!

Changes that mean junior doctor recruitment now favours overseas trained doctors, resulting in locally trained doctors not being able to get onto training pathways.

Medicine is a long game. When you get to consultant, the pay is better, the hours can be better and and the ones i know all seem to mix in lucrative private work alongside NHS. The pensions are very valuable.

However the road to get there as junior doctor is poorly paid, with long hours, progression through training can be slower than you hope as you sometimes compete with more experienced foreign doctors who apply for junior roles here just to get to the UK.

The NHS model is also being shifted to have more non-doctor clinical staff including advanced nurse practitioners, paramedics and physician associates carrying out more activities. In some instances this means fewer GP roles - its cheaper to have a paramedic seeing kids with minor injuries or ear infections.

The UK government is basically poaching doctors from the countries that can least afford to loose them.

My son is in the middle of specialist training. He is now 10 years in to his career, still having to live a nomadic life, deal with hospital management who have absolutely no idea about anything clinical or have very little business acumen and a GMC that are hell bent on getting rid of fully qualified doctors for the general public to be seen by. Please tell your children to choose ANY other career than medicine. He has lost 3 colleagues to suicide and his other friends have fled the country to Australia. We are at point where his hospital trust are making medical professionals redundant as they are in so much debt and recruitment is being blocked. Who would recommend the profession in these circumstances?

I’m a consultant . It took me 18 years of ‘junior doctor training’ to get there not including the 6 years of medical school. During that time I was relatively poorly paid for the skilled work I did, treated as a number by trusts and deaneries, moved from pillar to post. I spent 2 years having to live away Monday to Friday ( one while pregnant , and another with 2 children) . You pay for the pleasure of sitting exams ( my last lot aged 40 ) and being privately insured in car you get sued. The stress of getting a job and passing appraisals is huge .

In what other professional job would it be acceptable to ask a 40 year old to sit on a bin ( not enough chairs ) and sleep on a row of hard chairs to grab a rest ? You work long shifts including nights and weekends and your health and social life suffers. I know lots of doctors who didn’t find a partner as they were too busy to date/ socialise.

As a consultant I am well paid and I have more autonomy but the stress is worse. You can’t enjoy clinics as the pressure is there to see more patients in less time and the support staff have been taken away.

I know very few doctors who would encourage their children to choose medicine. It’s a huge shame.

I’d suggest he looks for work abroad if he wants to go into medicine

This is one of the big things that worries me. I'm a few years away from being a consultant and the job security was always a big benefit of medicine, but now that's not even guaranteed!

I'd also steer my son away from the career. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, it's immensely rewarding but it's also incredibly high pressured, impacts your whole life and training after uni stretches over a decade for most.

@LJGFD it would be interesting to know your earnings over your age/career so that other posters could compare vs medicine. (And what it took grades/ effort wise etc to get in)
I think the difference would be stark.

My daughter is an F2. She did very well at medical school and in her extra-curricular medical activities (medical charities etc). She has had excellent feedback. But now she is burned out. Didn’t even try for a training place and is off to Australia in January.

i am hoping she comes back but as we have close family there, I do wonder if she will.

Her cohort missed their electives because of Covid and she never had a gap year. Since she was 16 she has worked so hard.

Something about the last year has really made her feel quite low. Several times she has seemed to be about the only doctor around on nights and says she goes home worrying that she might have missed something and someone will have died. It’s a lot for someone who is only 26.

But there are days she tells me she spotted something that made a huge difference to a patient and helped save their life and that feeling does seem to buoy her up. Frankly, you wouldn’t have the same feeling in a corporate job. Nobody will give a damn that you snagged a huge client in one/five/ten years’ time but the person who is still enjoying life with their loved ones certainly will!

A lot depends on luck - there will definitely be a lot of years in very stressful, relatively poorly paid jobs doing nights & weekends and being treated badly by other staff (including some nurses and definitely other drs) & potentially moving a lot. I do know a lot of Drs who haven't had to move but they would be in high demand areas like Care of the Elderly, Gen Med, GP - you couldn't pay me enough to do those jobs, horribly stressful and under resourced. On the other hand some roles exist like Radiology or Neurophysiology that are very different - other pressures and you're at the mercy of having a good manager though.

The current training allocation by ballot is batshit - people are just taking time out to avoid it. Basically they decided to allocate all Foundation jobs randomly in the UK. Random. Achievements like a distinction, publications, elective choices have no weighting so what's the point of doing anything except passing finals? To force fill crap jobs in crap hospitals. Great way to send medical graduates into other professions!

On the hand most of the lawyers I know are paid substantially less & also complain about work, and university academia is even worse. I'm part time and have no out of hour commitments which is great but more due to luck (of jobs coming up that I wanted when I needed them) than good judgement.

@RoamingGnome yes, some of the other staff can be…interesting people, to put it mildly.

I am glad my daughter missed the random allocation for foundation.

There are jobs but very few training opportunities after the fiest two years. They also use a loy of locums trained elsewhere. Both my children are doctors and the first years are brutal. They have had little support from.seniors who are so busy themselves. Booking leave is very difficult and if you do get into training you have to be ready to move every 6 months in mant areas. For example the Yorkshire deanery stretches from Leeds to Hull.

This really needs to be addressed. Why aren't our young trainees able to walk into jobs when there's a shortage and overseas drs are prioritised?
I'm sure other countries don't want to lose their young drs either.

I did consider medicine, but ultimately decided to go into Physiotherapy, and am so glad I did. I have a great work life balance, working 9-5most days with 1 on call a month. But most importantly, I get quality time with my patients, drs get 10 mins if lucky, my appointments are 45-60 minutes, and I really get to know the families I work with (paediatrics) and build a relationship with them, and make a concrete difference to quality of life.
In my mind it's lower stress, higher job satisfaction, I have never had any issues getting a job, now I have 2 children I was able to move to a termtime only contract.

As an ex NHS HCW I tried to dissuade my DC from medicine but they were adamant they wanted to do it.

They are enjoying the medical degree and feel challenged.

Nobody knows what the future holds. At some stage you have to respect that your DC will make their own decisions and manage their own life accordingly.