Doctors, would you recommend beginning a career in medicine now?

[tropicalfish]

Hi,
There is alot of negative media attention on the life of junior doctors, junior doctor contracts etc. I dont know any doctors myself really and wondered is it all as bad as is made out in the media? I personally am completely against the new contract.

Would you recommend a career in medicine and if so where would you do it.
I would have thought being a GP might be a good option but I hear there are lots of vacancies so presume this is not considered to be a good choice.
Is working in London much worse than working elsewhere for instance?
My dc was thinking about doing medicine but is reconsidering because of the worries about doing medicine in that you can get sued, people could make a complaint about you, you have to study all through your career, pay alot of money to do exams and then not really get paid enough to afford to live easily particularly considering the many years of study and lifestyle sacrifices that have to be made.
TF

[Kr1stina]

Indeed mrs Merton . I'm surprised that somone so lacking in resilience and stoicism as you ever made it into dentistry

[Mrsmorton]

Yes, where I come from all the soft kids went to state schools. I used to find my lack of resilience really helped when I was getting bullied on the school bus. in fact the girl who got stabbed in home economics was a right fanny. She'd never have made it as a Dr
She was fine btw.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

It's one reason it can be best to recruit from the better private schools who seem to teach that kind of thing better than state schools.



Only on mumsnet.

[easterlywinds]

Also, it's not a case of choosing specialities more carefully. These candidates had a minimum of 15 years training. They were used by the NHS to help treat patients during this time, covering clinics, wards and operating theatres. They were past the stage of shadowing others and performing menial jobs. The options for the unsuccessful candidates are either to work as locum consultants (funding available for these as they are fixed term contracts) or job overseas. However if they spend too long as a locum consultant, then they end up with more competition as more 'juniors' finish their speciality training.

[easterlywinds]

I think there is a need for more doctors in most specialities but there is a lack of funding for them.

[DeoGratias]

I agree about recruiting on resilience and indeed stocism. it's a key requirement for lawyers actually - those of us who carry on whatever and aren't ill and turn up tend to do well (as indeed do most doctors). It's one reason it can be best to recruit from the better private schools who seem to teach that kind of thing better than state schools.

[DeoGratias]

So people then need to choose their speciality carefully as do lawyers. We always get in law times when there are not enough doing Y but too many doing X.

[Mrsmorton]

Just the same with dentists! There aren't enough jobs for all of them to complete just one year in the NHS let alone the number of years suggested by some.

There are big shortages in some medical specialties and in others it's not so bad.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Well, that's different then. But why are we being told that there aren't enough doctors to fill the available posts?

[easterlywinds]

Doctors cannot be made to stay and practise in this country because we often don't have the jobs for them. DH interviewed 5 juniors for a consultant post last week. All of them have completed their training. This is the only post in this speciality that is available at the moment in the UK.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Bean counters?? I should say so, those are people's taxes you're talking about. And anyway, it's not a reflection on conditions necessarily. You can have reasonable conditions but just stay, or pay a penalty if you scarper. This is what annoys me about medics today. If a reasonable point is made they instantly turn all victimised and melodramatic. If they're talking about going where the best salaries are after an NHS training they're just being realistic. If we suggest they could then pay for the cost of a wasted training we are bean counters driving you all to insanity.

[Needmoresleep]

crusshed, medical schools are already doing this. Bristol might be a good example. Only 20% weighting during the initial sift is on academic performance, the rest on personal characteristics evidenced in the PS and school reference. Interviews are then scored independently from information received via UCAS. This approach is not uncommon. Plenty of others treat achieving acceptable "grades" as an initial hurdle, but base their selection of from within that pool on much mider criteria. Achieving 4A*s does not guarantee a place at medical school.

[cruusshed]

If society deteriorates to the say so of the bean counters and their determination of "return on investment" - you could see a situation where the UK chose not to train 'expensive" professionals at all and just recruited directly from abroad - so zero cost to the UK. But I dont think that this is anything new - the UK has been under training the numbers needed and recruiting Drs and other medical staff from OS for decades.

The current decline in working conditions suggests that medical schools should select not just on grades but on physical and mental resilience if this is the new environment that medics are expected to work in.

[Stillwishihadabs]

But deogratis it is irrelevant whether contracts can or cannot be changed as junior doctors have to effectively resign every 6 to 12 months.

[DeoGratias]

I didn't say new contracts cannot be changed. I was just answering the legal point about existing contracts and even there I said that they can be changed if the other party to the contract is allowed to change them unilaterally - something we look out for in all contracts we look at.

[gonetoseeamanaboutadog]

Good question mrs. I wouldn't dismiss the idea at all. However! Teachers are much cheaper to train, meaning that they are already paying a higher proportion of their fees as it is. More importantly their lifetime salary is much lower so they are not getting as good a 'return' on their money as it is. Say what you will, medicine in the UK is heavily subsidised and the true cost of the degree is much, much higher. So it's reasonable for tax payers, and the NHS, to expect a return on that. Instead, we are losing these expensively trained doctors, who benefit from the system here and go on to get the best of both worlds somewhere else. There is simply not enough money in the pot to go hemorrhaging it like that. If we were to make teachers work for the state to get the same proportion of 'money's worth' out of them, they would work for a much shorter time.

[Mrsmorton]

Why don't other people (like English students or French students) have to work for a public service? They cost money to train as well and have lower life earnings in general so don't pay as much into the system?

Also ( as with dentists) there isn't enough money in the NHS to employ them all even for one year, what happens then?

[mags2024]

Just one little thing re fees - my son has student loan close on £50k for 2 degrees. His German girl friend, who trained in Cardiff, only had to pay what she would have paid in Germany and it has cost her £6k. So for her the EEC has worked well!!

[mags2024]

It is not anyone's job to recommend or not. If he / she wants to they will find away and if they don't its not ment to be. We are both in Medicine and have never encourage or discouraged - son was going to play cricket professionally. It didn't work out so took a gap year learning and living in Germany. Still no idea what to do so applied to Russell group uni to do a science degree - GCSE / A's were ok but not exceptional. He had worked for Mind voluntarily at school and kept this up and did similar help in Germany. Half way through his Biology degree at S'hampton he announced he was going to do Medicine. He spent the summer relearning to pass GAMSET etc and got offers from all the med schools he applied to. He was under no illusion as to the diffficulties involved in a life in medicine - he spent a good deal of his childhood being chucked in the back of the car whilst l finished off seeing some one, listening to our friends grumbling and us too. He is an F1 now and he is more switched on about what he wants, where he's going and how to achieve it than we ever were. He is well travelled and can speak several languages, he looks forward not back at regrets of what might have been as perhaps we do due to poor job choices with hind sight. He sees the world offering job opportunities not just the NHS and the odd exchange as we did. What l am trying to say is your child will choose it if they want it enough.

In my son's case from being mediocre at school he really "flew" when he went to uni and l think Southampton opened his eyes to what he was capable of- hense he did post grad medicine.

[Stillwishihadabs]

Deo for someone from a medical family you are showing a breathtaking ignorance of how life is for "junior" doctors (the first 16 years of my career). They change employers either 6 monthly of yearly, therefore effectively the new contract can be imposed. Did you say your brother was a doctor ?

[DeoGratias]

(tropical, if a contract says one side can change it without consent of the other then you can change it but most contracts do not give that unilateral right. So for most employees (most are not unionised and most people work for employers who only employ under 5 people in the UK amazingly!) if they are having a tough time they often do try to persuade employees to move to a 4 day week as the alternative is redundancy and often employees will agree but they do not have to. So if the employer stands its ground and says your pay is halved the employee can walk out and claim constructive dismissal.... However I have no idea what the NHS contracts say - another reason many of us chose to be lawyers etc rather than doctors working for the awful state where it has always been known you are not in a free market and you are at its mercy. The NHS contracts might well include a clause saying the employer has the right to make major changes without consent or the state might decide to make changes in breach of contract and take the risk people will resign and claim unfair/constructive dismissal where they have worked the 2 year qualifying period for those claims as most people would rather have a job even at lower pay than no job. So in practice plenty of employees and other people with contracts accept unilateral and disadvantageous changes to their terms as the lesser of two evils as the last thing they want to do is have no job and have to start litigation).

[lostinmiddlemarch]

Suggestions re: years of service requirement in return for subsidised training (right across the board but particularly in relation to medicine because of its very high cost and rate of emigration).

[lostinmiddlemarch]

Why do doctors on mumsnet so rarely respond to the suggestions from temporary and cresset? Is it that they have a point, or is there an answer you can't be bothered to repeat again?

[GirlFromMars1]

Short answer- no!

[Molio]

Oxbridge degrees regardless of course cost far, far more than the fees any home student is actually charged, are they expected to 'serve their country' for 5-8 years too?

Ironically a previous poster on this or possibly another thread was complaining about how her medic child would be repaying its student loan at 9% of its salary forever (I think that's what she said). So there seems to be conflicting views on the cost of medical training.