To ask if you’re a doctor do you enjoy it?

[Ferryaway]

Was it what you expected? Salary, hours etc. just with all the Doctors going on strike at the minute it absolutely baffles me that somebody trains for so long to be so unhappy with their work.

I absolutely love it and feel very grateful to do what I do, but I’m a consultant in a very nice specialty where hours are predictable and work life balance is encouraged. The junior years were brutal and that was before austerity and covid made everything trickier.

Hahahah! You must be kidding me. I love the patients. I love my teams (mostly) I hate not having enough equipment or staff to do even half what I'm trained to do. Cannot develop any service. Have to constantly fight for anything. Just keeping head above water. And like the PP I am highly highly specialised with a reasonable work life balance (because I am so niche) but many generalists think they can do my job as well as me. Especially in the private sector. I could be paid anything in the world but if I don't have the tools to do what I'm trained to do effectively it's still going to make me ill with stress.

I am a doctor, but a psychologist not a medic. I have 7 years of postgrad training, yet earn around half of what my medical colleagues receive. Makes me a bit sad really.
And yes I love my job, but it really is emotionally exhausting some days.

I’m a GP and there’s a lot that I love about my work. The privilege of being part of my patients’ lives at important times and their community as well is immense. I also have a degree of autonomy over how I work and I am easily able to discuss things with my employers if as a practice we are doing something badly or something isn’t working (not that it can always be changed…)

However the system at the moment is incredibly challenging (the hardest I’ve known in 25years since I graduated) and I wouldn’t want to be starting out - I think the NHS in general and hospitals in particular are a hostile environment for a lot of people currently. It’s very wearing not being able to do the job in the way you want to do it.

I’m not convinced the strikes are all about pay - the conditions for young doctors and their sense of being valued and looked after are not being well-managed. I believe that doctors are not allowed to strike other than on pay though? (Can’t actually remember as I’ve never striked and am not in a union).

It’s been a 25 year love-hate relationship

i am a max fax surgeon, so dental degree then medical degree. Would I do it again? Yes. Would I encourage my children to follow me? No.
I love my job, but I hate the NHS as it is.
Im paid well, but I’ve missed many birthdays, a wedding, things that are really important because I’m on shift, or called in or couldn’t get the holiday time I needed.
I get huge satisfaction from what I do. But there are much easier and less stressful ways of earning a living

Are you a doctor? I appreciate you may have a PhD but the job “doctor” is a specific role. This is a very very important distinction for me as a patient. Dentists, vets, and academic have the title doctor but in a hospital the title “dr” has a particular connotation, role, responsibility and expectation.

Goady much!

https://images.app.goo.gl/uucmfKd9BY9djh228

Why? I have explained my reasons - there is doctor the title and doctor the job. I have a doctorate but I don’t work as a doctor. I have been treated by someone I thought was a doctor (physicians associate) - the treatment was fine but I was bit unnerved when I found out a few weeks later they weren’t who I thought they were - would have liked to have known from the outset.

I love my job - the patient facing bits at least. I’m an anaesthetist and I enjoy giving an anaesthetic and all the bits and pieces that come with it.

I hate that the under funded and understaffed system doesn’t let us do it properly.

I don’t think we’re paid enough for what we do. especially with the cost of exams etc.

Yes. I qualified in 2000 and have built a very niche career. No way would I stay in the UK if qualifying now.

Well if you work somewhere similar to me, the actual doctors (as most people would understand the term) hold far more responsibility, accountability and provide more leadership than any of the psychologists. And work harder too. Easily worth double the money.

OP - I love my job. The hours and flexibility are far better than I could have imagined. I think my pay is good. We are well resourced. Though like anywhere, in the public sector in particular, there are slackers and shirkers which causes some frustration.

I'm 52, also consultant in super specialised area, so fed up of the job.

Absolutely love doing the medical parts of my job, all the clinical aspects, seeing patients and families is a pleasure and a privilege. The feedback from them is incredibly rewarding and work is always interesting and the team I work with are great.

What I hate and has lead to burnout for me and many others is the constant battle for resource in the current rubbish state of the NHS. Managers making decisions about things they don't understand. The daily bitter fight to try and get what you know your patients need. It's thankless and exhausting.

Yes most of the time - like any job!
I love watching people get better, return to life - who wouldn't
It is a privilege that people trust me to put their lives in my hands - something I do not take for granted.

Do I like some of the changes in medical education and training - no, I think it has reduced the competitiveness.
Am I tired of residents saying they work too many hours and their on call (ergo 12 hr shift) was exhausting - yes. Would I go back to the hours I did at their stage - no way it was awful. Things have improved but residents do not do 100+ hrs per week of yesteryear and to imply that and use it in their arguments to get sympathy, ignores the progress we have made on doctors working lives and there has been massive progress. However, after covering their work and doing mine for the last 5 days I have a slightly jaundiced view on this!

Would I discourage my children from doing medicine - no, it is a worthwhile fulfilling career but do not expect to get rich on it!

Different thing.

Perhaps it would be sensible to start referring to medics by role: physician/speciality and rank, surgeon/speciality and rank. Let's be clear, physicians are usually awarded the title of Dr on an honorary basis not because they submitted a PhD and passed their viva.

Personally, I think anyone with a PhD is more entitled to use the title Dr than a physician.

Back to the subject of the thread the issue seems to be the NHS. Perhaps it's time to abolish it and replace it with something better like in France, Austria, Germany, etc.

Yes love my job it’s fascinating and rewarding - a big but coming here. But hate the decrease in pay, recent lack of job security, paying for my own exams. Having to move jobs every 6-12 months around a huge area to different hospitals. Hate not being able to rsvp to weddings as I might be working but no one will give me my next rota so who knows. Hate working in a system where patients suffer because resources are stretched. Hate being told by the public as I make life and death decisions at 3am that I’m greedy and overpaid.

I’m a registrar, my lifestyle will be miles away from consultants in their 40s and 50s. And those in med school now will have it worse than me, lack of training jobs, real terms pay cut, hugely expensive housing.

Ultimately the vast majority of the population would not have the skills or would not want to do my job. And it’s not up to me to subsidise a failing NHS by accepting the biggest real terms pay cut in the public sector.

I have enormous amounts of responsibility and enough experience to say pay us fairly or we will leave for other countries.

Thank you as a senior for recognising now rubbish it is for more junior colleagues. I hope everything will improve in GP. I’m hospital based and patients don’t realise the pressure that primary care is under.

I have literally had consultants tell me the intensity of work is worse than it has ever been. That the medical take would be regularly cleared overnight and everyone could have a rest. Now it’s 30 to be seen in the morning at handover in some hospitals. 30-40 years ago STEMIs went on bed rest +/- died and we can do so much more for people now. More work for everyone than ever. Even 20 years ago apparently lots of EDs could clear the board by 5am.

It’s more competitive than ever. There are no jobs for SHOs. I’m very lucky to be in higher specialty training now, I do not envy my more junior colleagues.

@stuffedpeppers I can’t imagine thinking it was shit for me, so more junior colleagues shouldn’t complain. Why is this a race to the bottom? Most other posters on here are saying they wouldn’t want to do the job if they qualified today. I dread my children ever following me into this career. It’s going down the drain!

I do like being a doctor and I would do it again. I have fortuitously ended up in a fairly niche specialty with a reasonable work life balance and more flexibility than many.

(I say this although my reasonable work life balance does involve working unpaid into the small hours usually at least one evening a week sometimes more to stay on top). But I work less than full time, I can rejig my diary when I need to, get leave when I need to, don’t work many weekends, can do some admin and meetings from home).

I think the thing that is the most difficult is:

Working really hard and knowing patients still haven’t had the care you’d want for them.

I knew there would be hard work, expected and welcomed it. There have been times where I’ve stayed late to talk to a relative who was flying in from abroad, where I’ve helped arrange last minute weddings because people are dying, where I’ve pulled out all the stops to get funding for and protocols written for patients to access specialist new treatments. All very rewarding and satisfying.

When you’ve slogged your guts out, not eaten, not peed, and you know that a patient has been stuck in A&E for hours on end, they’re angry and frustrated (fair enough), they’ve waited too long to see you. They need a bed, you have no control over when they’ll get one. You have choice between giving them more time which they deserve, or making the next patient wait even longer. You can’t be certain they’ve had anything like the monitoring they should have. When you’ve delivered life changing news in a cupboard or sat on a bin, or somewhere with no privacy at all. That’s a bit less satisfying and haunts you a bit more, and erodes away at you.

When you set out to try and deliver something that isn’t possible. I’ve had days where I’m down to see or call 2 new patients and 18 follow ups in a morning clinic, plus advised the other docs/nurses etc on the patients they’ve seen. We’ve squeezed people in so they don’t wait. 3 people are booked for a face to face appointment at the same time because I’m covering a couple of lists. They all need a complex discussion. Sometimes I’m ready to see the next patient but the rooms are all full. Even if I was the most excellent doctor in the world that clinic was never going to run to time.

Working hard and knowing you’ve done a good job I’m ok with. Working really hard and knowing multiple people have received substandard care and not having control over a lot of it can be demoralising.

(Work in the NHS but not in England so a bit removed from the strikes).

I retired a few years ago, early, due to ill health.
I enjoyed most of my career but was pretty miserable for the last 5-10 years and whilst I wouldn't have chosen my route to retirement I'm happy to no longer be working.
I miss my actual clinical work, and many of the people who I worked with, but I don't miss being an NHS employee at all. Years of being asked to do more and more with less and less ground me down and my years as a Clinical Director took a particularly heavy toll. And then in the end when I was seriously ill, my Trust treated me very poorly as a patient and even worse as an employee. I hope to never darken their doors in any capacity again.
And I'm not unusual. I had dinner with 3 of my friends from medical school this weekend actually - 2 consultants and one GP partner. All completely disillusioned, burned out and planning their exit strategies asap. We all loved our jobs when we were younger but those days are gone.

The clinical work can be very rewarding, and teaching can be fun, but the management crap is awful, and the appraisal/revalidation merry go round gives me suicidal ideation.

I'm an A&E trainee. I graduated six years ago and at my current rate of progress (working less than full time for family reasons and having taken maternity leaves) I might be a consultant in ten years. I love looking after (most) patients, I love being able to help people, I love being able to learn new things all the time and I love the team I work with.
I hate: never being able to get my rota far enough in advance to plan anything and consequently missing important family events, nativity plays, birthdays etc. Not knowing if I'll make it onto the next rung of the ladder when I have to reapply for higher specialty training. Paying for exams. Losing family time to studying for exams. Potentially failing said exams if I haven't put in enough time/ paid for the right prep courses and having to do it all over again. Spending half my time at work looking for a free/ working computer. There never being enough chairs for the computers. Broken chairs giving me backache. Then wasting ages longer looking for a space to see the patient because patients are bedded in A&E cubicles because there's no beds in the rest of the hospital to move them to. Trying to treat seriously unwell people on trolleys in the corridor. Being fucking hampered at every turn by 'great idea' technology like magic electronic drug cupboards that only have access for permanent members of staff so I have to bother a nurse to get out whatever medication I want to send a patient home with. People who have nothing wrong with them/ could have self-cared at home but have inexplicably waited for six hours to see someone cluttering up the place thus making it harder to spot the person in the waiting room who's actually about to keel over. Referring patients via electronic forms instead of being able to speak to other clinicians. Electronic patient notes that make no sense. Things getting 'lost' on the way to the lab. The totally crap user interface of the portfolio I have to complete. Constantly having to prove the worth of my existence via said portfolio. Being used entirely for service provision instead of being trained. Not having a decent staff room/ anywhere to eat on break. Being guilt-tripped by rota coordinators if I call in sick. Colleagues coming in sick to avoid the guilt trips and giving me their lurgies (because we all share a windowless cupboard for an office and three and a half working computers). That I will never pay off my student loan and in fact when it eventually gets written off I will owe more than I started with. There are a million other things that drive me mad but I can't come up with them all right now. Almost all though are less to do with being a doctor and more to do with the current working conditions. If I'd known more I would still have become a doctor because for me it was an insistent vocation, but that doesn't mean I'm thrilled with the current state of affairs!