Medicine 2022 - The final furlong

[Monkey2001]

Support thread for aspiring medics.

We want all our DCs to succeed, whatever their school type. We share knowledge to help them to achieve their goals, celebrate success and support if things don't go well.

Offers are in for some, others on waiting lists, others doing their A levels and planning a gap year.

Best of luck everyone for great results on 18th August, we will be here to celebrate, commiserate, advise and generally support you for the last stage of the 2022 journey. 🍀

Previous thread - www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/4464984-Medicine-2022-Decision-time

2023 applicant thread - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/4459778-Medicine-2023-Entry

My son got his grey scrubs at Newcastle last week

@Solarlantern they do come up huge. I should have posted that. DS had to change his last year too. Newcastle's are a nice blue colour @Monkey2001.

Sort of bluey grey. And enormous!

Seeing DD this weekend - watching her play hockey, fill her cupboards up at Tesco and then dinner on the beach at Tynemouth. Can’t wait!

Are you going to Riley’s, Kingscote? We had a lovely afternoon on the beach with a decidedly delicious white wine too this summer. We’re back next week and have lunch at the Ship’s Cat in North Shields. Fabulous seafood all along the coast. Hard to beat. Have fun!

We stayed in Tynemouth - great for morning walks on the beach with the dog while watching the surfers and handy for Metro...lots of great places to eat too!

Yup, Riley’s booked, then we’re relying on the DC to have made good choices for the Newcastle and Durham dinners.

DD says first official ‘Scrubsday’ for her is Nov 8th! Lab coat is also massive…

Haven’t been on the thread for a while, but thought I’d update DDs situation. She had 4 offers, firmed York and insured Keele. Predicted grades were A*AA

She didn’t get the grades - college was shocked as was she. Then came the mad rush of clearing and she didn’t know what to do. Keele offered Biomed, which she took.

Moved her in to Keele, 5 hours from home, accommodation was ok but standard shared bathroom / kitchen set up. Made her room look lovely. Flatmates all were very quiet but seemed nice enough. Then the worst imaginable - DD messaged me in the night having been to the campus SU in freshers week. Her drink had been spiked 😔 She was really, really unwell so we did a mad dash back to her. She wanted to come home to recover especially as she didn’t feel safe there. A week later she decided she didn’t want to go back - in a flat spin about her future but ultimately didn’t want to go back and withdrew.

DD has just got a job, which is great news, but finding it hard to know what to do next. She’s looked at unis closer to home to restart biomed. But time will tell I guess.

So that’s us. Hasn’t gone to plan at all. I’m just happy that she’s safe.

@BabbleBee sorry to hear that she has had such a turbulent few months after a successful round of medicine applications. Sounds like a wise move to take time out and reflect. Spiking is everywhere, DS1 was spiked (was out with a group of girls and thinks they were the targets) and ended up cutting himself very badly when trying to remove a club wristband whilst incapacitated and ending up in A&E for several stitches, he will have the scar for life!

The problem with Clearing is that you can get swept down a route you have not properly considered, so it really is a good thing that she is back home, in a job and taking time to think. She needs to think about what it was that attracted her to Medicine; if she loves the idea of coming up with the next vaccines, Biomed is a good route, if she wanted to be a GP, she could consider Physician Associate, nursing might tick the boxes - DS1's GF switched from Medicine to Nursing after very disappointing exam results and is enjoying it, can see roles as nurse consultant which would appeal. If she still wants to be a doctor, you probably know that she should not be doing Biomed, but re-sitting A levels if she was anywhere near getting the grades, and also looking at whether she meets WP criteria anywhere, so may be eligible for Medicine with a Foundation Year or be able to get in with the grades she has.

Let us know if she needs any more specific advice. This is the info for Physician Associate at Reading - can't remember where you are based. www.reading.ac.uk/ready-to-study/study/subject-area/medical-sciences-ug/mpas-physician-associate-studies

Central Lancashire also does a four-year undergraduate physician associate course, if Reading isn't in the right part of the country.

@BabbleBee - has your daughter looked in detail at www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/explore-roles if she's still interested in patient-facing roles but medicine is off the table. If she's thinking about medicine as a graduate (very expensive if she can't get on a dedicated graduate-entry course), she should make sure her first degree would be useful to her if medicine still doesn't come off. Biomedical science isn't always (or even often) the best choice.

Thanks for the replies.

Medicine is off the cards totally. I think she’s just had enough tbh - she’s worked tirelessly to get there and just doesn’t have anything left. I’m an NHS nurse and she definitely wouldn’t consider nursing, and I wouldn’t recommend it either. When she really looked into the working conditions she’d graduate into as a doctor she really questioned if it was worth it. She spent time talking to some of my colleagues, both doctors and nurses, after the Keele incident and was quite relieved she didn’t get in!

When we went to the open days we met a couple of brilliant professors working behind the scenes on Covid and also new diabetes drugs which she was very interested in. To be honest, I always thought she’d go down the research route and was quite surprised she chose medicine. So biomed does seem suitable, the most local uni has asked her to apply with her current grades and a new personal statement which they’d consider which is a positive.

It’s just all not as expected - she was excited to move away and be somewhere new and now she wants to stay close so this is a new concept to get her head around.

@BabbleBee That’s so hard for her - everything being pulled from under her in one go. Is she considering retaking one?

@Shangrilalala Breakfast at Riley’s, then on to Bamburgh!

@BabbleBee, so sorry to hear about your dd's awful experience. I'm sure she's wise taking that time to come home and take stock and take some of the intense pressure off herself for a while. Then she'll be able to start a course that's her true first choice next year (rather than a hasty insurance decision). Biomed can open doors to some really interesting careers.

Ds is enjoying life as a re-fresher so far and says he's already working a lot harder than he ever did for his chemistry degree, but thats because he's finding it so interesting rather than stressful.

Ooh @KingscoteStaff that looks fabulous. The North East coast is truly my happy place. There’s something about the big skies, the sense of light and that ‘brisk’ sea breeze that I just adore. I hope you had a brilliant visit. We descend on Tuesday for our trip (part well-being for DD and part indulgent memory lane for us). Birthday lunch in Durham too - I can’t wait.

@BabbleBee I’m so sorry that your DD had to go through that. The spiking epidemic seems to be everywhere and is a deeply unpleasant aspect of student life. Some TLC and reflection for future plans and some time to breathe and she’ll surely find the path that’s right for her.

Dipping back into this thread after some weeks. @BabbleBee so sorry to hear about your DD. I’m sure she will make the decision that is right for her. Having the time and space to think through all her options this year isn’t a bad thing.

So, DD is back this weekend. She is getting stressed with the amount of work. She’s had to come home for a few weekends to complete something that was ongoing and that has made it more difficult to keep up. It sounds like the med students at her uni have lectures/tutorials/anatomy 9 - 5 every day which means she has very little time to socialise as she spends her evenings and weekends mostly going over lecture notes, doing homework or life chores.

Which means that (a) almost all socialising is done with other medics as other students have far less on (b) it feels like she is missing out on some of the uni experience because of the volume of work and (c) how in earth is she going to fit a part time job if she needs more money? It certainly wasn’t like this for me on my non-medic degree at a high achieving university.

Is this normal? How are your DC managing? Thoughts please!

@notmedicmum I'm afraid, yes it is normal. At some points it will ease up a bit, especially after they get used to the volume of stuff. Do remind her she doesn't need to know everything - that's impossible. She needs to get used to not being the 'best' in class, and that passing is all you need to do. Hope that makes sense !
It's why there are so many Medics societies. They do tend to stick together as they work so hard. Although my vet DD claims she works much harder than the Bristol medics 😂. Does she have a medic parent she can talk to ? They can give great advice.

@notmedicmum and DD worked during the summers. No chance in term time.

@mumsneedwine good to know this is normal (although not ideal). They do have a medic parent system, which has helped. And she was aiming for AAA at A levels not 3 A* 😀. And I think we are resigned to working in the summer holidays and perhaps Easter, although I have heard that medic summer holidays get shorter and shorter as the course progresses.

@notmedicmum 😊 it is tough (mine was an A girl too). There's a lot of new info, new ways of learning, living away from home and new friends to make. Nottingham have a wobble week at the moment, because this is where lots of students (from all subjects) sometimes have a little wobble.
There's also imposter syndrome where you think everyone is coping better than you and you're not good enough. V common and v understandable, and usually not true. Tell her she'll get there. Anki seems to be v popular to help keep up with stuff.
Big hugs xx

@notmedicmum depending where she goes summers will get shorter after 2nd it 3rd year. Working 3 months in first two years can get enough money to see you through the dreaded 5th year though. Nothing like 13 hour shifts as an HCA to get you ready to be a doctor !

DD's life seems to revolve around Anki sessions!

I don't think all med schools are like that! St Andrews is not 9-5 every day, I think more like 20 hours/week. I think it was at the Leicester open day that they said it is 9-1 Monday to Friday in first year, afternoons in second year. They certainly have more than most, but should not be that intense in first year. It was different for DS1 as he started in 2020, so there was no social life for anyone. Hope she manages to balance things as things move on.

Nottingham is not like 9-5 at all. In fact DS has the weirdest timetable. It literally changes every single week. It is all on an app, and he has to check the app constantly to know where and when he is supposed to be. It is rather frustrating for me as a parent, because I have to ask him for any given week when is a good time for anything - to phone, to think of coming to visit, etc. Because I don't have access to the app, so can't get any feel for what he is doing when. He had his first "proformative" [which I gather is another word for test or exam] on Friday, and will get the results tomorrow (although just him and his personal tutor), it apparently doesn't count for anything, just a first indication of how they are doing. He said on Friday after it that in any event it has already helped him focus his studying, as he now has a much better idea of what they are looking for than he did before - in studying for it he said he felt very unfocussed as he didn't really know what they wanted, so tried to memorise all sorts of things they clearly didn't want. I guess we shall find out tomorrow. He said that they actually said to them that if they did really well in the proformative they should consider doing some more extra curricular activities - but he doubts he will be in that category.

From speaking to past students it seems every Uni does is slightly differently. Some really make this first term tough and then ease off a bit. Others break them in gently and then ramp it up. And others just keep it pretty busy but manageable all the way through.
Everyone will likely find it tough at some point (usually 4th year which is hard work everywhere I believe).
Asking for help is important, whether that's from staff or other students. Don't struggle and not tell anyone - it feels much better to talk about it and realise you are not alone. It is not a weakness ! It's a tough degree and career and willingness to talk is so important.