Harsh opinion - is it fair to give work experience to students who in reality haven't the academic ability to enter the profession e.g. medcine?

[mids2019]

I work in a large NHSq trust and we are continually being asked by our widening participation team to take on work experience students for a range of medical careers including clinical science and medicine.
A lot of the children unfortunately are forecast 3/4/5s at GCSE yet schools and the widening participation team keep saying we should be giving work experience to these children who in reality won't be qualified for some professiions out of what I see is a misguided sense of fairness.

The medics push back at this saying they simply have no time and time would be wasted enthusing a child about a profession they would be unlikely to be able to do.

The medics are quite happy to take students from a locally high performing grammar school as a matter of course unofficially (and often due to parental connections)

Feels very depressing that we are immediately writing off kids at GCSE level.

If we have a utopian world where NH S professionals had work experience as part of their job plans and there was plenty of time to talk to young people about their role great. However it isn't like that.

Staff groups who are hard pressed in the NHS a lot of them time avoid work experience like the plague and in order to convince them to do it I think you need to make them feel the experience is useful and lead to actual career choices in that direction.

Work experience is an opportunity to see people in a work situation, to start understanding about how to behave in a work situation, how to dress, how to speak to people, how to follow instructions, how to spend a whole day at work and keep turning up, how to be polite and on time...

The actual placement itself isn't so important.

Maybe it is good for people who are never going to work as doctors to get an understanding of what doctors do. Those who want to be doctors and have the grades might benefit from doing more menial work placements where they get to under what that's like!

There's hardly a shortage of applicants with the grades though, and what counts as clinical work experience is perhaps wider than approaching (emailing?) a few hospitals. Volunteering in a care home, St Johns ambulance, summer playschemes with disabled kids, pathology (very few apply to pathology), oversees volunteering in the summer, getting first aid trained and standing at the side in football matches, reading books to kids in hospital, taking a gap year and a job as a nursing assistant...

It sounds like there is an issue with allocation, but suggesting the NHS have missed out on someone brilliant is hyperbole. The kids who are studying medicine do have the grades and the initiative to find some form of work experience. It's not perfect, but it's not that flawed.

My work experience changing beds and feeding and talking with elderly disabled patients at a cottage hospital was much more valuable for my future career than just watching a senior Dr doing their job. Quite honestly my holiday jobs in shops and as a chamber maid and pot washer in a hotel were just as useful as anything specifically medical. It taught me about professionalism (turning up on time and putting in the effort) team work, dealing with the general public. It also made me surer that I did not want to do those jobs for the next 40 years of my life but gave me a respect for those who do because it is bloody hard and thankless work.

I think medical school should put less value on the fake parental connection shadowing type ‘work experience’ in which no actual work is done and more on people who have actually done some kind of work in whatever field.

You wouldn't be allowed to do that sort of placement these days sadly. Health and safety regs & data protection really limit what work experience students can do/see. Some hospitals have very rigid application systems do if students aren't at a local school or don't know when to apply they can't go through the official channels. If a student is well motivated I'd be much more likely to help organise something outside the formal channels, but it's a pain to organise.
The Dr/nurse/HCA doesn't get paid for any of this and it majorly impacts on my admin time when I have someone sitting in clinic with me, but I very rarely sat no to keen people (provided they are allowed to be there).

I totally agree that placements in a job that the student is clearly never going to get is pointless all round.

Exactly the same for me - the actual paid work I did as a care assistant and cleaner was way more useful than the time sitting in clinic.

Unfortunately kids don't tend to realise this and wish they were doing something 'more exciting' - unbelievably rude to the people who do these jobs day in day out.

Most hospice volunteer programs will have a set pathway for anyone wanting work experience for med school. It won't be following the doctors and will probably be making tea but the ones committed will do it.

People who are involved in medical student selection will often tell you they are more impressed by someone who has worked at McDonalds than someone who has pulled strings to sit in on their relative's clinic.

I agree with you, but can it be an opportunity where they could be inspired and then realise maths is important and a stepping stone for where they want to be?

Could be. But the number would be so, so small it still wouldn't justify the time required to provide the 'inspiration'.

I guess it's just sad as children from deprived communities don't get much exposure to all the future possibilities

But these students wouldn't operate on you. They might never become doctors themselves, but would it be impossible for them to go into the medical profession at all? They could become nurses or do other work related to medical field and these early experiences might make them valuable hospital staff. The could also carry their knowledge into other fields.

I am against barring people from learning just because it would not benefit me directly. That's so short sighted.

This was also my thoughts, it can widen their world. They might not be a Dr but they might want to work in a hospital

I work in a busy and fast paced environment - shadowing slows you down irrespective of the person, however student on placement, you have actually responsibilities including making a decision whether they will they pass that module. I have never had a school student shadow me - I don't imagine my trust would allow it. I agree that a GCSE student shadowing could be potentially less intensive but possibly require more supervision.

I suspect you are right in in an ideal world, NHS professionals would have protected time in their job plans for mentoring and supporting work experience. But we all know that’s not the current reality. Staff are stretched and understandably cautious about taking on additional responsibilities that may not feel immediately impactful.However, I challenge the idea that work experience only becomes worth it if it leads directly to a career decision in that direction. I think that’s an overly narrow and instrumental way of looking at it, and it misses the broader purpose of work experience altogether.

Work experience should first and foremost be about exposure to working life, understanding how systems operate, how people communicate, and how workplaces function. These are developmental experiences that help young people grow in confidence, build communication skills, and understand the world beyond school or home. Whether or not they go into healthcare is secondary.

I completed my work experience in a studio. I never entered that industry professionally, but the experience taught me things no classroom ever could. My first paid job taught me some life skills. I was shy and self-conscious. I had to speak over the tannoy to call staff. This helped immensely in a way that school and home couldn't - I had no choice as I was a paid employee. Every job since has built on that confidence.

We shouldn’t sell work experience to staff as a direct recruitment pipeline because not every experience will or should lead to that. The value lies in the exposure, the interaction, the inspiration, and sometimes just the normalising of being in a professional space.

Most trusts have a minimum age limit of 16+ for clinical work experience.

If the widening participation team want to encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds who might not have considered a career in medicine, surely talks and taster activities at school or online or an open day for under 16s (before they start thinking about A level choices) are more appropriate (and inspiring) than following a doctor around all day just watching. They can reach more students that way than a handful of work experience placements. If it’s a big teaching hospital, couldn’t they collaborate with the associated university widening participation team and involve medical students and all those foundation doctors collecting teaching experience for their applications for training posts… Ditto for other healthcare professions.

It is hard enough for prospective medical/clinical science students to get hospital work experience and disruptive for staff and patients. Far better to have a centralised scheme for 16+ students only with a minimum requirement of grades that would be acceptable for applying to the career they want to follow. Ban private arrangements.

Attainment and ability are two very separate things, perhaps the work experience might be the driving force and motivation behind attaining at one’s actual potential and ability.

Stop punching down.

I agree that work experience for experience of a professional environment is of value even if it doesn’t lead to a career in that field.

However, OP has said that it is the medics pushing back. Two weeks shadowing a doctor in Year 10 is not great work experience for anyone whether they want to be a doctor or not. They aren’t going to be doing anything practical themselves, just watching. As PPs have suggested, prospective medical students may well learn more skills of value to a career in medicine making tea in a nursing home or serving fries in Maccys.

There are better ways to engage under 16s and encourage wider participation. Better to invest the few opportunities for work shadowing medics in those students further down the line in applying to med school who probably ought to see the harsh realities of working in the NHS before they commit…

Work experience is hard to come by and I will hold my hand up and admit DS got a very good placement because of DH contact in the research lab of a multinational company. My brother was assistant VP for a global pharmacy company in America and offered him experience as well but he didn’t fancy living under my brothers very strict regime. But they are not a public bodies.

As an accountable public body your trust needs to have one route in to work placements with minimum requirements depending on the actual work route they are interested in.

When it comes to social mobility we are products of this. Immigrant parents, kids born in Hong Kong and also the UK. My brother is exceptionally academically gifted but also has great people skills, that’s a rare combination. I will admit to knowing that ticking the ethnic minority box helped me. I worked in the public sector. When DS apllied for his degree apprenticeship he ticked mixed as he is. My friend said that will help him, I kind of hate that in a way but she is not wrong.

Widening participation and policies wanting to include more minorities probably helped us but I’m still not sure how much I agree with them.

@Mirabai In trades, the parent often owns the business! Doctors patently don’t own the business. So it’s clearly nepotism. Plus when did trades people need work experience to get to university. The joke is that, allegedly, doctors hate their jobs. Under paid and under valued. Yet their dc flock to apply for the medical schools with the best and curated work experience!

@CharSiu To be fair I suspect you come from a high achieving ethnic minority. They are not all the same. Apprenticeships are very much used to tick the ethnic minority or deprived boxes. Others just suck up the course fees!

I agree that this is the complexity here. I’m a teacher and work with students from backgrounds where these grades may be typical predictions but where there is often much greater potential there, for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes these students do significantly outperform their predictions at GCSE or get those sort of GCSE grades and then significantly improve at A Level. This improvement has to be spurred by something and in my anecdotal experience, it’s often it’s a combination of being inspired by something like work experience, while also potentially maturing a bit and perhaps life circumstances stabilising a bit (maybe moving into a more stable home with a grandparent, or a parent leaving an abusive partner or improving a precarious housing situation).

Obviously the difficulty is that the grades required for medicine are so much higher than passes that the jump is a big one, and I can understand an argument for minimum predicted grades on that basis. I also understand that medical work experience is significantly over-subscribed and it would take resource to work out which students with lower grades had the academic potential required for the role despite poor grades and which perhaps didn’t. Nonetheless, in principle, I think that these opportunities should be open to students with lower predicted grades because they can be the push or lightbulb moment that they need; that means they play an important role in social mobility. (Oh, and it definitely shouldn’t only be open to students attending grammar schools - that’s blatantly discriminatory!)

There are heaps of ways to get relevant experience, not just in hospitals. My ds volunteered in a care home twice, and eventually once, a week for a year.

You may be surprised to many with an NHS medical or management background actually discourage their children from applying for medicine. It’s bloody hard work, antisocial for raising a family, endless expensive exams after qualifying, and yes, relatively badly paid. Especially for plan 2.

I don't buy this. My DD is currently looking at med schools. I haven't seen one that has any requirement for clinical work experience as it's so hard to get, particularly for under 18s. I think that sounds like an excuse.

Who are you to judge what that child may be capable of in the future? You are trying to gatekeep the medical profession/ high earning/ positions of power for private educated children of your other privileged friends and family. You should be ashamed of yourself! I left school with 2 GCSEs and have ended up with a BSc in a high paying healthcare job. If anything you should be taking the time to encourage these less privileged and less educated children. I’m so disgusted and angry and this honestly! Even if that child ended up being a cleaner at the hospital or a catering assistant, does that mean they don’t deserve work experience? I hope one of these kids ends up being your boss and sacks you!!

Lots of students take a gap year at 18 and work in the NHS or care, at least for part of the year.