To not want DD to become a doctor

[toomuchgoingonhere]

Lovely DD has told me before that she was considering medicine. I didn’t think much of it as she was in year 9. Whenever I bought it up again, she told me not to ask her and leave it with her. This week, (she’s now in year 10) she mentioned A-levels, very light-hearted, saying she thinks she’ll do biology, then came “I have to decide if I want to be a doctor”. Now my AIBU is that from all we hear, and all that we know, it’s sounds terrible. I’m not going to mention anything to her again, but there are lots of pathways- paediatric, gynae, bones….
what do you think? Anyone else with a DC going studying medicine or have made it though the other side? Are you are doctor or OH?

@mumsneedwine No. It doesn’t imply that. Don’t twist what I say. It’s obvious many think doctors do work the hardest of anyone but I think many others will do too to earn the same or less. Doctors are not the only hard workers who put in long hours. I don’t see how that can be disputed really.

I know more than you would imagine too! Including one postgraduate Dean, and several with serious research careers. Probably from before the time of 12 month maternity leave, given the ages of the children (teens and young adults).

People who are super high achieving doctors often also have high achieving spouses, and between the two of them can afford nannies and cleaners.

I'm out of touch?! You do realise that only about 7-10% of the entire working population earn £75k+? And that obviously includes a load of people who are way over 40. Do you expect people to feel sorry for you despite 90% of the population earning less that you?

🎻

My DC are 21 & 19 12 months maternity leave absolutely was a thing in the '00s.

Maternity leave acts of 1999 and 2003 if anyone cares. Some of those babies will be Drs soon.

Postgraduate dean and serious research careers implies they’ve spent much of their career in academia/medical education though - most likely actually employed by a university and then ‘contracted out’ to the NHS - at least that’s how most of my academic medic friends work.

Whilst impressive, that sort of working arrangements means you’re relatively protected from rotational service needs and clinical work (for all the senior clinical academics I know the clinical component is the minority of their work schedule and mostly focussed on clinics vs inpatient care).

It’s certainly a set up that lends itself more easily to having 3+ children vs being a full time (or even part time) medical registrar or consultant obstetrician…

Funnily enough was talking to my doctor husband last night about his job. He is never bored, always challenged and does really enjoy it. Not many people can say that.

Yes it’s really hard work and does impact on work/life balance. I know I would not have the stamina, but he does. And he’s already worried about not having enough to do during retirement (ridiculous!).

TBH they are a different breed!

I’d get your daughter to consider how much energy and stamina she has. If she has loads, great!

My colleagues are all clinical and had their families whilst on acute rotations, some with Dr husbands. It is completely do-able, even enjoyable. Don't believe everything that misogynist Adam Kay says.

Yabu - I have a younger sibling who is an almost registrar. She loves it and actually has a great work life balance. She even reduced her hours recently to I think 60% and is still quite comfortably off. One of my parents is a hospital doctor too and loved his job so, so much. It is a calling and they love their work. I'd be thrilled if one of my dcs wanted to do medicine. It just so happens that my sister lives alone and doesn't have children, so I suppose that does make it easier, but my sil is a GP and her husband does an unsociable hours job. She's had lots of children and still had a great career.

I am a doctor- consultant surgeon.
I love it but do work incredibly hard at all times of day and night.
I have children and a husband with a successful professional career too
I make people better and most are very grateful- that is truly a great honour. I drive home at 5am tired but on an adrenaline high when I have saved someone’s life.
I earn a very large amount of money (successful private practice too).
My son has now said he wants to do medicine- Y11. I didn’t encourage it but certainly wouldn’t put him off.
My 20s and 30s were hard and I had to do many professional exams but honestly I would do it all over again.

Well I made the very stupid mistake of becoming a teacher. Finally got myself out of it after 20 years - woohoo!! My three kids will hopefully never touch it wirh a bargepole: I'm almost certain they won't.
I'd be fine if my youngest wanted to become a doctor (my other two are pursuing maths and ecomonics at uni) but that's perhaps because I don't know the pitfalls of that career so well? I was nowhere near smart enough to ever consider that line of work.

I'm a doctor, married to a doctor with a child. I understand exactly the burden of acute rotations with a family - including friends being randomly told a month before starting a new job that they'd been reassigned to a new placement that would make nursery drop off/pick up almost impossible. I have colleagues who can't even get HR to reply to their emails about maternity leave.

I'm just pointing out that the doctors @Tigerbalmshark is talking are a minority and that it's probably the academic side of their job that is enabling them to be in a position where they have 5 children, rather than the NHS side and that as a general rule, if a large family is a priority to you, clinical medicine is quite challenging.

Plus the way training is going with bottlenecks etc it means that you're pretty much going to be having your babies whilst you're still a registrar so talking about consultant salaries is irrelevant. We certainly can't afford a nanny/cleaners etc on our salaries (and we only have one child).

I feel quite similarly about teaching actually.

It just goes to show, you really need to know yourself and if you get the right match between person and job, with luck, all will be well.

@Needlenardlenoo I've strongly advised all three of mine not to become teachers - luckily they are all far cleverer than me!
I'm out of it now thankfully 😀

Most people who apply to med school don't get in - there's more to it than just getting a few good science A-levels. Does she know that? Because it doesn't sound like it. If you don't want her to be a doctor, I think you might end up getting your wish - she doesn't sound very committed or determined, or even like she's really looked into what's involved properly.

UCAT is a big hurdle to getting in these days.

Not at the point they had their kids - they had them as SHOs and SpRs (the postgraduate dean’s waters broke in her first pregnancy at 32 weeks putting a vascath in at 3am).

Wow OK so the 14 months is new to me as is the perpetually being pregnant and taking sick leave and having a career job!

I once had a boss (who I saw recently prides himself on being a leading Christian medic!) who told me if I took annual leave he would ensure I never worked in that region again!

(To be clear I’d pretty much forgotten him until this thread then I googled his name and there he was-probably still threatening his juniors! And yes as far as I can tell he did make several attempts to fuck things up for me over the years, weird behaviour for any adult, double weird for someone who thinks he’s a Christian) oh but I did work in that region again, several times actually!

Sorry I’ve stayed off the thread for a bit I know bullying happens everywhere I think for various reasons when I was a junior medicine was very susceptible to it (you were very dependent on the person you work for and so on I don‘t think it is the same any more for a whole bunch of reasons) I just started trying to explain why I wouldn’t want mine to be a Dr then it all came pouring out! I probably should have deleted it as being not relevant.

I don’t think the rest of what you say is ment for me but if it was I would let any child of mine make their own mind up but I would of course make sure they know the debt they are getting in to and the wages they can expect to earn together with how likely they are to get a job. My youngest is too young for this to be an issue now, the older ones have chosen different things, ironically one of mine faints at the sight of blood so a medical degree wasn’t for her! I gather there is a very real glitch getting training places in the UK but this might be changing in favour of giving preference to UK doctors. If so it’s long overdue IMHO

I’m more with you I suspect there are a few who were lucky enough to have a certain set of circumstances occur but for the vast majority that was never going to happen. There will be a few years where training programmes were shortened, there were far fewer bottlenecks and working conditions were improving and people who were in the right place at the right time will have been sweet but for the vast majority of currently working Drs there were bottlenecks, long training programmes, periods of locum work and whole combination of things that ment that wasn’t really a possibility for them. One trust I worked at heavily publicised their family friendly working arrangements what they didn’t promote was that the only person in my unit who benefitted from them was the male Dr with a wife who worked part-time. All the women with kids were told he had to give up the job first before they could get family friendly arrangements.

I know some men with a few kids, (often multiple wives) some women with 1 or 2 they had when they were in their 40’s, but I only know 1 female Dr who is a consultant in a London teaching hospital with 4 or more kids and has been on top of her career. I’m not in London now but where I am I can’t think of a female hospital Dr with more than 3 kids.