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?

My son is a Doctor. It is the kind of role you do if you are dedicated but it is hard work to start with. The degree takes five to six years and the NHS is not the best of employers. It is quite hierarchical and has a big blame culture. After ten years at consultant level it pays well but the level of responsibility is still high and most of the people who studied alongside my son would say do some work experience and consider the role carefully before applying.

Junior clinical fellow jobs
https://www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/search/results?searchFormType=main&keyword=junior%20clinical%20fellow&language=en

My dnieces and dnephews are both young doctors and have gone to Australia. As have most of their friends. It’s absolutely brutal in the UK.

So why are overseas graduates being prioritised over UK trained medics @olympicsrock ? Are they cheaper? More willing to go to unpopular parts of the UK or work in unpopular specialisations?

My daughter can get fellow jobs but cannot get on the training. The consultants like her but they have no say im the national recruitment. One told her thry could not help her with getting something published as they never had. Thry did not need it in those days.

She has started taking the extra exams which they pay for themselves.

@Letsbe what these exams ?

Letsbe did your DD finish her F2 last summer and is currently doing a clinical fellow job? Apologies if you've already explained.

Easier to recruit. Cheaper than those wanting a proper training contract and on yearly contracts so easieeto het a budget for a year than 7 years.

Training posts can recruit everywhere they can mix say Leeds with Hull. I will not say which think is likely to be more attractive. So maybe 6 months on one a year in the other.

She finished her f2 two years ago and has had a couple of clinical fellows and also done some locumning. She applied for training but no interview. She is part time studying for another masters - she has one already.

She is trying to sort out getting a publication but she would prefer to be with patients.

Yes but these are the second ones she has just been told she passed hers. Just hope thet have not messed up.the marking of those.

I'd recommend trying to understand what makes them want to study medicine and seeing if those interests or strengths could be better met elsewhere. We are a health care family, doctor and physio with parents who are nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. Medicine is an important job but it's getting harder and harder and I don't think that most people who start medical school really understand what they are getting into. Medicine is not a good work life balance for several years (usually including those where you would start a family) and is pretty universally high stress with difficult conversations and manging increasingly complex patients with limited resources. The best thing for your DC would be to speak to some doctors/do some work experience and see if this is really for them. Training is brutal, are they OK having no control over where they live after they graduate and having their annual leave dictated to them? Are they happy to work a rolling schedule of days, nights and lates and earlies for years?

Yes I definitely hope so - the recently announced issue was very unusual though.

Well done her - sounds promising. All the best for the interview.

Not that unusual. Happened with PACES a few years ago too.

Avoid medicine for all the reasons given in PPs.

Also avoid pharmacy for the same reasons.

Honestly, with medicine, the juice ain't worth the squeeze. Unless you are particularly hard skinned and don't mind being disliked by your colleagues and a bit scheming. In which case, go for it, you'll earn loads.

My dd is in her final year of her degree. She's planning to go to Australia after her foundation years. I hope she will come back!

I never encouraged her to apply for this - there's no reflected glory here. I really worry about her future. She was determined to do it though. (Currently on elective and having a brilliant time).

Young Drs have always gone to Australia or NZ for a year or two after house jobs. Loads of my colleagues did it 20/30 years ago and mostly they came back. It's English speaking, our qualifications are recognised and it's sunny. It's not some kind of new unusual disaster scenario. Some of their guys come over here for a few years too.

Also we have always had loads of overseas graduates propping up the NHS. The entire structure has always been predicated on it because we have never trained enough of our own. Loads of my excellent hard working colleagues are originally from India or Pakistan and have made lives and careers in the U.K and contributed hugely often doing the jobs that U.K. grads will not do. Latterly we've also had quite a lot of Drs from Ireland and from Spain and Eastern Europe and now Hong Kong. I am welcoming them with open arms they are desperately needed. IMGs never used to be so resented. We were happy to have posts filled by overseas Drs or there would be rota gaps that we had to cover.

I just can't see that any of this is anything new. Medicine is just as much of a shitty and yet wonderful career as it always has been.

What do you or your children want from an education, whether in medicine or anything else?

@Ethylred a job ?

Sorry for hijacking the question Ethylred but I'm assuming the OP wants to be sure there is a job for her child after a 6 year course, and don't forget decades in some cases of junior doctor posts.

I don't think this is unreasonable. After all, what all, what does one want after an actuarial education, for example ? An eternal love and deep fulfilling understanding of the spreadsheet?

Similar in Scotland. Not helped by health boards actively recruiting from Nigeria with incentives such as 6 months free accommodation. One of my local hospitals has at least 50% Nigerian nurses and students from the local university couldn’t secure permanent contracts on graduation.

With nursing, it’s not helped by it being all degree now so programmes follow the academic calendar and 1000s of student nurses graduate/ all looking for jobs at the same time once a year. In the pre-degree days, Glasgow had 4 schools of nursing and each “produced” about 50 nurses twice a year so there wasn’t the feast or famine scenario.

WRT medicine - I still believe it to be potentially a very rewarding career if a person’s heart is in it for the right reasons. But yes, the NHS needs to stop plundering recruiting from poorer overseas nations and employ the students we have paid to educate.

As we have established there are easier jobs

Far far better rewarded and easier jobs that an academically successful, sporty, 'good egg' person like OP's child could get. Being unemployable is not really a concern for such a person on the whole.

Much more pertinent is do you want to serve the general public in what is often a thankless role including being criticised verbally abused and sometimes even assaulted? Do you feel able to put up with crappy terms and conditions for a protracted period because the joy of helping someone in need makes it worthwhile? If so choose medicine. If not choose another job.

So many professions are becoming unmanageable with the increasing pressures, and some with declining salaries in the NHS. Ask any teacher, physio, clinical psychologist etc. At least medicine offers the opportunity to rise to a very good salary.
The issue is societal not profession-specific with greater and greater pay disparity which we just seem to accept as a populace. Profits go to those higher up rather than paying appropriate living wages lower down. Until we get rid of the need for the term ‘working poor’ it’ll continue.
If someone has a vocation for medicine, why not pursue it.

If this was really what was happening that the U.K. was taking in overseas Drs whilst leaving U.K. ones unemployed it would indeed be insane and a very stupid policy for any government to have. Given the lack of a general outcry about this I really think it might be a bit more nuanced than that....

• What we really have a shortage of is not junior Drs but fully trained senior ones who can educate the junior ones as well as do the job. It is these that we are getting from overseas in my personal experience in my specialty in my area.

• the NHS has always always taken a lot of overseas junior Drs and indeed relied on them to staff the NHS. This is nothing new. I suspect it is just that these Drs used not to be able to compete on a level playing field due to visa constraints and had to take all the crappiest jobs that no one else wanted. Now it seems they are being allowed to compete with U.K. grads for the desirable jobs and in some cases are winning. No wonder really if you are willing to leave your home and family you are often very ambitious and hard working

It is not that there are 'no jobs' on training schemes for U.K. grads. I bet you can walk into an old age psychiatry job in the Midlands or the North. Might not be so easy to get a cardiology or neurology training rotation in London or the South East. If I'm wrong then I am happy to be proven so if anyone on mumsnet has a junior Dr child who is indeed struggling to get on a psych or care of the elderly rotation. I'll bet they are trying to get popular jobs in popular places which have always required extra stuff to secure.

I am afraid that some of the comments are sailing close to xenophobia for me and sound just like a subset of the general unpleasant anti immigration rhetoric that abounds and that I find disingenuous given all that immigrant healthcare workers have done and are doing for the U.K.

I am white British and my kids have no interest in medicine so I have no skin in this game beyond 30 years NHS work in an unpopular specialty where well over half my colleagues at any given time did not go to medical school in the U.K. The same situation applies to my nursing colleagues as well.

@LongDarkTeatime because there are not enough jobs. Doctors are unemployed with £000,000 debt. Unless you head abroad