To be or not to be a doctor?

[MrsDThaskala]

DD said today that she’s been in thinking about becoming a doctor. Not sure what area, not sure what kind, just said it out of the blue today. I mean she’s doing well in her sciences. But quite honestly, the doctors I know, GP and hospital doctors, and a surgeon always say how stressed they are, how much pressure hospitals are under, how hard medical school is….etc. not necessarily for my DD but what do you think? With all that we know about the NHS right now, what’s your take on becoming a doctor?

Sorry mumsneedwine but my own DC have had nights in a row and been super tired but they would never show such a staggering level of passiveness.

And why did your own DD not question it? Or you? You took to social media to repeat it as fact.

Your answer to too many challenges from other posters seems to be: thirteen hour shifts, tired from a night shift. Always some easy excuse.

All I remember is a lot of tiresome posts suggesting that most young doctors and their friends are, essentially, too passive and lazy and that all that is needed is to be as driven as your son and his friends. With the implication that we as parents had failed.

No acknowledgement that there are systematic problems in the NHS and that those finishing F2 this August face a huge struggle even to find zero hours work.

Before your time, but there used to be a ghastly woman who posted about eight over achieving DC who all went to Oxford. So awful that people who clashed with her would get PMs from someone who actually knew her, confirming that we were not the problem. She was best ignored.

My theory with her was that since she was just a housewife with not much to occupy her time, being superior on MN was a way of unleashing frustration and unhappiness. I am very interested in what drives you.

As always, unpleasant. At least you’re consistently rude 😂

Needmoresleep I think that most people capable of reading English can work out that when a poster says the NHS is in a dire state, they don’t mean that they have a touching faith in the NHS.

mumsneedwine I merely asked why you relayed such clearly incorrect info on social media. Why did you not question it yourself and reassure this young doctor? It can do real harm to post this stuff on social media - people need to act responsibly.

Needmoresleep just as in the real world there are some utterly ghastly people and some very decent people and mercifully the latter always outnumber the former.

Shall we reintroduce this.

@Needmoresleep I remember that weird person, the one with the 8 perfectly amazing children who were so much better than every other child that ever lived 😂. Never could work out why they needed to belittle every other human on the planet but it made them feel better I suppose.

’In what drives me’ ? That’s a bit intense Needmoresleep 😆 I’ll try my best.

On the infrequent occasions that I post on these threads I suppose the chief motive would be to counter misinformation with whatever personal experience or common sense or general knowledge that I have to hand, which happens to be relatively considerable. The misinformation is potentially harmful. It can come in the form of statements which purport to be true (mat benefits/ international conferences for additional points having to take place in India - or at least outside the UK), to misinterpretation of graphs and numbers (to be fair that was dealt with efficiently by an Oxford consultant rather than by myself - she was far better equipped). Or long diatribes about one single experience in a unique deanery which is in worse shape than all others and can’t reasonably be extrapolated from. There are plenty of other ways that information is misrepresented and if you read my post above you would see that I said I was flipping in my tuppence worth for a bit of balance against the relentlessly bleak scenarios.

On PMs, I personally have a horror of them when they come from people I don’t know. I try to be polite but I infinitely prefer real life relationships to online ones and some people do overstep.

Oh yes - I also really hate moaning tbh. It’s not remotely constructive.

I’m calling him Jeremy. Last name optionally mis said.

I really have no idea why you would say that. Pharmacists are imo jumped up cashiers. Someone said that to me when I first graduated and I have still not forgotten it. We have no time to speak to the actual patients. In the community it is read prescription, type instructions, print label, select product, stick label on. As patients often go to different pharmacies it is difficult to spot drug interactions, dose changes etc.

With dispensing assistants it just means more responsibility as you have to trust they have checked the patient history and the label and medication matches the prescription.

ssiIf the prescription is unclear or some other issue and you have to contact the dr. It often involves waiting as they are in consults. This in turn annoys the patient who is likely sick anyway in these circumstances.

Customers are getting more and more annoyed also due to stock shortages. It is the only profession where you give out advice for free. Yes we are paid for certain things smoking etc, but not Mrs X has had a cough for x days ...

'Jumped up cashiers' who earn a lot more than your average cashier. Much less responsibility, good hours and high pay. That's why docs are really envious.

The market will decide and the free market works pretty well. 18 year olds who are bright enough for these kinds of jobs have vastly more information than in my day when I had cycle to Newcastle library and borrow a book called "What people earn" when I was a teenager. Most have access to the internet and can make reasonably informed choices. I have certainly not put off my 4 solicitor children from my own legal career (although their choices and that of the 5th child are their own) nor the extended family member who starts medicine later this year.

There are happy and unhappy young doctors out there as there are in most professions and jobs.
Trouble for young doctors to get jobs is no different from law (in fact probably vastly easier) where almost anyone who can pay for a post grad course gets a place and then you have a massive log job of people vast numbers of which after 4 years, sometimes 5, at university are on the minimum wage of £23k in paralegal jobs sometimes for life as they cannot get a training place even under the new SQE system which is supposed to make it easier

If people are unhappy with these pretty cushy professional jobs they can always make other choices eg one of my sons was a post man for 4 years, then a delivery driver and now works in a warehouse. (he is the only person int he small warehouse, rather than some vast Amazon warehouse but it is certainly a different career than others mentioned on MN at times and will have pros and cons to it as much as medicine does).

Xenia is a lawyer. Not sure why the need to comment about doctors. Currently it’s a mess as many doctors will be unemployed. Nothing to do with a free market, it’s to do with money. Some people are making a fortune bringing in doctors (who can easily get forms signed off by paying - google Nepal and MSRA exam if fancy a scandal) from abroad. UK graduates are disadvantaged all the way through the process as they have to work in the mess that is the NHS whilst trying to pass exams. Wards can now have broom cupboards and toilets as bays for patients. No functioning IT in many cases. Less staff dealing with more patients.

But, if you want to do it, knowing all this, and the likelihood you’ll be unemployed 2 years out of Uni, then do medicine. Just know you’ll be paid badly for the hours and responsibility you’ll have. £17 an hour for holding the cardiac bleep on Xmas day.

I hesitate to lighten the tone of something ostensibly so serious, but this has been such a great read this afternoon.

Disregarding the hours, moves around the counties and country (t'was ever so, this is not new), threats of no jobs etc, medicine's a relatively secure, well paid profession. Suits some, not others. No one has to stay in a job for life. There are lots of examples of doctors who now work in the media, arts, politics.

OP: Many jobs are stressful-our local librarian has been off work with stress-so ideally aim for a career they think 'll enjoy even if stressful. Who knows what medicine will be like 6-7 years from now and beyond.

The current Oxbridge parent thread is also very entertaining, complete with some of the longstanding contributors who add to the flavour. They are all very well meaning, just like those on this thread, and I think of them with affection.

Xenia's family appears to be steeped in medics. I'm sure that she's at least as informed as the mother of a single F2.

Yes quite. If you don't like the working conditions or you don't get a training position then leave and use your degree for something else. Medical research, law, City, Civil Service - heaps of decently paid jobs they can transfer over to.

May also be worth saying that when various consultants have come on these threads about the inequity of competition for junior/ resident doctors, and said that competition is necessary and that the current generation are maybe a bit soft, they're told by certain posters that they're only pretending to be consultants and probably aren't even doctors because they 'lack empathy'. Which is actually very funny. I don't think introducing a light tone is a bad thing at all Mamiac; there's a strong streak of fairly comic irony present already.

Ridiculous comment. Why would Xenia have the same knowledge of the current issues as someone who is the mother of an F2?

Xenia's father was a consultant, her brother is currently a consultant, and she has a niece who's a student medic. There may be others in the family too, those are merely the few that I've clocked that Xenia has mentioned.

An F2 is still quite a baby in the scheme of things Hollibobcat. My comment is not in the least 'ridiculous'. A strong word from you for a mild comment from me.

They are all pretty clearly well off the radar of the current F2 situation. One hasn't even started medical school yet, one is probably dead or well into retirement and the other must be at least on the cusp of retirement, if not retired. Quite apart from all that, Xenia's comments make it pretty clear that she doesn't have knowledge of the F2 situation.

Xenia is a lawyer. Not sure why the need to comment about doctors

Just to take this one small step further: plenty of lawyers, both solicitors and barristers, are in a prime position to comment about the current complaints about competition for training posts. This is because those who practice in a number of areas - not merely clinical negligence - have to deal with the fallout from doctors whose negligent actions have caused harm. They have to deal at close quarters with less than proficient doctors and almost always with hospital management too. Many have excellent insight into failings where those manifest, albeit from a different perspective from a mother who is cross about the perceived unfairness of a medical system which doesn't guarantee a smooth progression up and does require more from its senior doctors than merely having graduated from a UK medical school.

I'm astonished that that isn't self evident. Check out the various inquiries which are current. We need the best doctors regardless of where they were educated and whatever their country of birth.

Ok, l'il bit of empathy lacking there too.

20,000 doctors anticipated unemployed in August. F2, ST3, CCT and GP. Argue all you like, these are facts. While waiting lists are 7 million and money is found to employ PAs. Who do less but earn more than doctors.

Those sticking up for this unemployment are frankly weird.

@Mamiac you are v v out of touch. Over 60% of F2s do not have a job in 6 weeks. Job for life ? What a laugh.

And Auch seems to be running the Xenia fan club 😂