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?

Yes I thought the same
That's medicine. It's like that
I died watching This is Going to Hurt the Adam Kay thing because it was a pretty accurate description of my life in medicine
I would recommend all applicants read the book/ watch the series. We only had House of God. That's worth a read too in a trippy 60s way it describes the same thing.

I cried
I didn't die obviously!

Such a worry. It seems to be the same across the board. I know of too many recent AHP graduates with the same problem. Frozen recruitment and loss of posts despite the state of healthcare, public health and what we know about ratios, acuity and our ageing population are a real concern.

Just to add, it’s the same for nursing. Most recruitment is done abroad now hardly any jobs for juniors advertised.

@ThePure overall it's currently estimated to be 1:5 in this year. So 5 applicants for every job . However this figure might end up being higher as this is what's happened so far ..

Saw this - might go some way to explain what's happening. Follow the money and I'm sure we'll find the cause

Yup me too,made Dd watch and read it toobefore doing her UCAS, made her more determined.

Yes for speciality training, there has always been something a bottle neck- terrible in the 90's when a lot of doctors did go to Australia to escape Thatcher's Britain, then better in the Blair years, although MMC ( modernising medical careers) was a disaster not being able to get a training number isn't the same as not having a job....

@Neurodiversitydoctor agreed. But this year the locum market has dried up and there are v few trust grade/F3 jobs. The ones there are have so many applicants (because of overseas bots) they close often within 24 hours.

Consultants can no longer make jobs for the F2s as there is no money.

Any suggestions are v welcome as to where our doctors and nurses can find work ?

Headline today - not my favourite paper but says it quite succinctly

Well I think things will slowly improve now we have a labour government.

In terms of where jobs might be I think Norfolk, Suffolk, bits of Essex as well as Newport and Rhonda are always looking....... Yes a few (12ish) years ago London teaching hospitals would appoint clinical fellows- not any more.

@Neurodiversitydoctor thank you. Unfortunately even the hard to recruit areas aren't taking many people on this year. Seems there are recruitment freezes everywhere. The few jobs there are need an application v quickly, which can be hard when doing long shifts.

Unfortunately for us, applying to NZ and Aus is v simple. Our staff get the jobs their staff don't want. Still better paid, less hours and not unemployed. It's so v v sad.

I am a consultant towards the end of my career. I have a lot of experience with doctors at the beginning of their life as qualified doctors. I think a couple of previous posters have highlighted something I have become aware about. Doing a medical degree isn't much like being a doctor. A degree is an academic exercise which needs some intellect and working hard at the books; being a doctor is, at least in the first few years, a thankless slog as you get experience and it needs resilience, flexibility, maturity and great emotional intelligence and it's really hard work- you've got to want it enough to make it worthwhile.
I have supervised several clever young people who struggled with actually working at all, never mind in the brutal world of the NHS. I wish schools and some parents would really question potential medical students as to their motivation. I worry that schools and family are keen to benefit from the reflected 'glory' of clever young people studying medicine. There are few rewards for academic genius as a jobbing doctor. It is tough and heartbreaking when someone who is evidently clever but not smart at the job, takes the decision to leave. Such a waste of their time and perhaps a dedicated and slightly different person could have had their place.

Neurodiversitydoctor my DS was appointed to a twelve month junior clinical fellow post just three years ago in the London teaching hospital where he'd done an F1 rotation. He wanted to make sure that this was the specialty he preferred before applying for training as it hadn't been his original plan. Now a registrar (at the same hospital) he told me last week that they have four junior clinical fellows working with him.

Maybe his specialty is unusual Neorodiversitydoctor - no idea.

And it was 3 years ago. Things have changed as you know but choose to ignore. Funding has gone for lots of those jobs.

mumsneedwine please read Neurodiversitydoctor's post which I replied directly to. The post referred to no clinical fellow jobs in London teaching hospitals for c12 years, which is not my DS's experience since his appointment was recent.

And this you can probably understand too: he currently has four clinical fellow in the team.

This is why what you say is incorrect. Four current posts being funded. I suggested to Neurodiversitydoctor that his specialty might be unusual and I'd be interested to know from her if that could be a thing.

But I think you need to read much more carefully and try to take in what conversations are actually saying before you ping out a knee jerk response (with the same old graph).

I thought the training jobs in Wales cover the whole of Wales as it is one deanery. Have I misunderstood? That is what is putting my daughter off Wales although she has to get an interview first. She says the recruitment is national and if you get through then you rank the posts. Is that correct?

Sorry to derail the thread but both my kids are trying to get onto training programmes.

Is your son in a training programme I guess he must be if he is a registrar. I thought you had to apply nationally not to an individual trust.

I googled and

Clinical fellowships are fixed-term locally contracted posts (usually 12 or 24 months) outside the national training pathway, combining clinical work with time set aside for non-clinical activities such as education, research, quality improvement or professional development.

thanks for any help

How can you have been torn between applying for medicine or investment banking ? Genuine question. What stage of your career was this

DD was firmly steered away from Medicine by a wonderful couple of surgeons she met in the pool on holiday! I can't thank them enough when I read threads like this. It's a disgraceful situation the the brightest and best find themselves in after arduous and expensive training in UK universities. They should be treated preferentially but the very opposite seems to happen.

Letsbe I'm not sure I can help. I'll have a go. DS was asked by his consultant on an F1 rotation what his plans were for after F2 and suggested he might like to think about spending a full year at that same hospital to see if the specialty was something he'd like to go into. The consultant let him know when the advertisement was due to go out. He applied and was appointed. I'm afraid I don't know the mechanisms of the application. But it really is a good idea to ask the consultants you've come across on rotations if there's anything coming up in areas you're keen on. I do know that doing this particular clinical fellow job helped significantly when DS was applying for the specialty registrar training a year ago because it evidenced his 'motivation' for the specialty (yet another box to tick). So these years have real value all of their own.

I am talking about non training posts, yes training posts are recruited to nationally.

Pleased to hear the London trusts are still recruiting to clinical fellow posts ( I think they are called speciality docotrs now).

Just idly googled over 4,000
https://www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/search/results?keyword=Speciality%20doctor&language=en

My Dd has wanted to be a dr since she was really young. She's really bright too and I know she's determined to go for it. This thread makes me really sad for her and all our dcs who are drawn to this incredible career.