Medicine or Nursing- how to help DD decide which?

[FiveHoursSleep]

DD1 is in Y13 and is definitely interested in some sort of medical job. She likes science and is good at it. She got all 8s and 9s for GCSEs, except for one 7 for Spanish and an A* for Classics.
She's doing bio, chem and sociology for A levels and is predicted AAA* and sat UCAT last week and got 3000( or 750) .
Up until her UCAT score she was slightly biased towards nursing but now she says she feels she should do medicine.
She thinks she would be happier doing nursing but is worried she might regret not doing medicine. She has a part time job working with the general public and is good with people and thinks medicine might not allow enough patient contact for her.
Deadlines are looming and she's torn and is getting upset about it.
Oh and she's pretty keen to take a gap year if that helps any.
Any suggestions?

Both jobs would involve high patient contact at a lower level, I think at a higher level, nursing would be the one with less patient contact. As she can't fill her form with 5 medicine places, she could put her 4 medicine choices down and putting a top ranked place for nursing in her 5th slot. That would keep her options open for the moment as the deadline for application for medicine is less than a month away.

Psychiatry?
I would imagine a lot of patient contact there

If she were my child, I'd strongly encourage medicine. Both are long hours and stressfulo, both carryhuge social responsibility. One pays hugely more than the other. If she ever wanted to drop to PT while DC are small, a couple of days a week as a GP or locum at a local Health Centre would pay more and be a stabler job than agency nursing.

Has she considered dentistry?

I think she needs to have a look at the carious rolls in the NKS, there are a lot more rolls and there are roles where the line is blurred between roles such as 'the vein stripper', this is a nurse who removes the vein from the leg of a patient undergoing heart bypass. So performing surgery.

Other specialisms are opening to nurses.

There is another option, not don at all universities but somehave a joint first year for various professionals.

www.uhs.nhs.uk/AboutTheTrust/Newsandpublications/Latestnews/2019/January/Press-release-Nurses-perform-surgical-procedure-in-expansion-of-cardiac-services.aspx

Psychiatry?
I would imagine a lot of patient contact there

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine. To become a psychiatrist you have to complete a medical degree, complete foundation training alongside all other newly qualified doctors and then undertake a specialist psychiatry training programme.

I think she needs to have a look at the carious rolls in the NKS

I wondered whether "carious" was referring specifically to dentistry but then realized it was just a small-keyboard artefact (like "NKS").

This is a good point. There are useful tools on the NHS careers web site to identify possible roles of interest and also to input likes & dislikes to find out what will suit you best.

www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles

www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/career-tools

She could put her 4 medicine choices down and putting a top ranked place for nursing in the fifth slot

I don’t know how university admissions work but I would want to check before doing this. Certainly to me it would make it look very much as if nursing was viewed as the second choice and could also look as if she was not wholly committed to medicine (even if both those things are the case I wouldn’t advertise it!).

Perhaps things are different now but that was always a definite no in the past.

Unis don't see what else was chosen (I think they used to in old days, but they have no such info now). Nor the order of choices.

Oh that’s interesting, thanks lljkk. That’s loads better than it used to be then!

Unis don't see what else was chosen (I think they used to in old days, but they have no such info now). Nor the order of choices.

We do see if you've also applied for another course at the same university. But otherwise we can't see the other choices.

The problem with making 4 applications for medicine and 1 for nursing is that the personal statement will be written for medicine, so the nursing school will be able to see that's the applicant's preferred course. In any case, any application that comes in before 15 Oct is obviously from a student who has applied for medicine, dentistry or veterinary medicine, or to Oxford or Cambridge.

Are nursing schools such snobs? I would have thought they want the best applicants, full stop, however they get there. They are subject to FoI requests, so have to follow their published admission process strictly. I bet no school admission policy says "We can't be arsed to interview you b/c we dislike the other course you applied for or the fact you considered another course which means you aren't sincere and will waste our time." If they don't say that, they can't do it.

I know some courses 'score' the PS. Trying to fit the right buzzwords and descriptions into the word limit can be hard if there are 2 rather different courses aimed at. That practical restriction exists.

DD has been told that nursing schools are quite used to being 'second choice' to medicine and applicants can submit a separate PS by email.
What do other Med School applicants do about PS and that fifth choice?

Medicine - no brainer. If she doesn't like it she can become a nurse later. My father was a doctor and uncle and my sibling is - it is a very good career. I don't think she will regret it.

Some put Biomedical Sciences or Biomed as their 5th choice and some unis give you the chance to switch to medicine after year one if you do well

It's pretty rare. And the "switch" almost always means going back to the start of year 1 for medicine because (a) year 1 of the biomedical science course won't be GMC-accredited and (b) numbers of students entering medicine courses are capped so taking students into later years would mean taking fewer into year 1, which means a financial hit for the university and messes up planning of placements for future years.

I would recommend applying for the HCA Bank at your local hospital. Both jobs are very demanding both physically and mentally, both jobs work very unsociable long hours, and lots of studying. I think getting basic nursing experience would benefit her immensely because its not like any other job, she will see things that may upset her or go against her point of view. She will love either, both very worthwhile jobs. Best of luck to her!

need to be 18 to be on the HCA bank, though.

If you study nursing, you will struggle doing anything else but nursing, although can move to management. I think you have a lot more opportunities for diversity and conversion with medicine and however limited nowadays with both discipline to influence the NHS, you will still have more of a say as doctor when it comes to your own position.

I'm a nurse educator now. People I worked with are either educators, researchers, specialist nurses. If you are bright there are more opportunities to advance to a wider range of career options than medicine. My friend became chief executive of a hospital trust. His salary far exceeds many doctors. If she wants to care then I don't think many doctors get time to really care. Neither do ward nurses tbh!

Update on this, in case anyone else has a child having the same dilemma.
DD says she is pretty sure she wants to do paediatric nursing ( but not 100%), so she's applied to two medical schools and three that do her preferred nursing course.
We will see what happens if she gets med school interviews. If she's really sure there doesn't seem any point in attending!

I wanted to update on this for anyone who was interested or had a child facing the same dilemma.
DD1 initially applied to three ( pediatric) nursing schools and two medical schools. She applied to two courses at one university.
She got interviews for all courses, having written separate personal statements for both. All the nursing courses offered her a BBB place and she was very keen on this for a while. But then she had a medicine interview for Birmingham and quickly got an offer.
We had to wait a while for her second medicine interview and when she came out, she said she had got the wrong end of one of the stations and had done very badly in it.
She waited and waited, along with plenty of others, to hear what this uni would say and then the schools closed, exams were cancelled and her busy working, social, revising life ended. When she got a rejection from that med school a couple of weeks ago she was distraught. The feedback was that she had performed 'very well' in all other stations but she had got no points in the final question. She also wonders if having applied for a nursing place in the same university may have tipped the scales.
At first, she said she would probably do nursing as that uni/ city had been her first choice, but after a few days she got in touch with some other prospective Birmingham med students and firmed her offer for medicine there. She's picked out some accommodation and is hoping she'll get the grades needed from the assessment process.
Sorry for the long update, but maybe this might help another parent or young person in the future.

@FiveHoursSleep Congratulations to your DD on securing an offer to study Medicine. I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and I wish her a happy and successful career. My DD wants to apply for Medicine to start in 2021 and she would be delighted to have an offer to study at Birmingham as it's one of her favourites at the moment.

Speech therapy?

FiveHoursSleep that’s fantastic news. Well done to your DD.