Work experience for Medicine

Discussion and advice on University Education

Moderators: Section Moderators, Forum Moderators

loobylou
Posts: 2032
Joined: Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:04 pm

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by loobylou »

I'm a GP and we struggle with the students we have doing work experience because of confidentiality issues. Admittedly most of the pupils are local which makes things harder. I definitely second the advice to try and get some volunteer work in a (good) residential or nursing home. Not only does it give him the chance to work in a caring role (that's different from the role he takes at home) but it is a great way to learn resilience and empathy. Not only for the residents incidentally but also for the staff who are often on minimum wage and doing a very hard job (and will be doing it for the rest of their working lives long after he's gone). It's always good to remember that from GP land and from hospitals when it is easy to criticise care standards or knee-jerk admissions....!
Yamin151
Posts: 2405
Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:30 am

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by Yamin151 »

So, if you don't decide on medicine until half way through sixth form, have you had it?? It dismays me, the amount if 'extras' needed for some of these courses. No doubt working in an old peoples home is fabulous and so good for all concerned, but if you don't, if you are a youngster who does spend his of her leisure time as, horror of horrors, leisure time! Just like I did. Does it mean you will be a rubbish doctor? Isn't this just yet another way we, if life, is upping the ante and putting more and more pressure on our children to be better than everyone else? I know it's great to volunteer and not be selfish etc, just seems such a shame to me that childhhod, right through to uni, is beginning to be less and less about freedom and finding yourself, whilst you also learn that you gave to pitch in to help the family run, and more like a list of "what little johnny does as extra curricular". Clearly the move to this has come from somewhere, I wonder where? Just seems all wrong to me.
Hope the O P has luck in finding something, but I don't look forwRd to it myself either........whatever happened to listening to Madness, fantasising about a boy you wish would ask you out and spending hours in your best mates bedroom, or mcdonalds, plotting and gossiping? Of indeed working in a Saturday y job to earn money to buy clothes! No time for that, must do something worthy.
Sorry, rant over, and rant is to society, not anyone here
hermanmunster
Posts: 12816
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:51 am
Location: The Seaside

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by hermanmunster »

Agreed Y151 - whole antics of getting into medical school is crazy. As it is I have known of plenty of kids who have decided quite late and they have done OK, I suspect some of the requirements are a bit of an urban myth.


Glad my two saw the light though and decided against applying - at least if they had they done they knew what they were letting themselves in for.
Amber
Posts: 8058
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:59 am

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by Amber »

I agree too, Yamin, though would say that despite spending an afternoon a week at a care home DD also lived a full and active social life and still does. She's never been much of a vegger out, but does masses of things at home and outside it - she resented school itself far more than any voluntary stuff. She actually enjoys her voluntary work and sees it as part of her social life too -when she was injured in the summer she still wanted to go there because she missed her friends. So it isn't a chore for her and she has actually taken on more voluntary work as well as paid work during her gap year.

That said, I think it is ludicrous that kids have to jump through so many hoops and it once again privileges those who are privileged already - those with family connections or who don't need to earn money or whose parents have a car to ferry them about in.

And ditto here Herman, huge relief when that decision was finally taken. I gather there are parents who are very keen for children to go to medical school, so much that medical schools have trouble sorting out those who wanted to go from those whose parents 'guided' them in that direction. We were the opposite way round to be honest and when she (deliberately) missed the deadline for application this year I was very relieved. :D

I put that in small letters because you did. Is it taboo not to want a doctor child? :?
Tinkers
Posts: 7240
Joined: Mon May 16, 2011 2:05 pm
Location: Reading

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by Tinkers »

Interesting point about parents directing their offspring towards medicine.

I was at a careers fair at my DDs school last year, and the careers teacher was saying she was trying to encourage more girls to at least think about science careers other than medicine. (So me promoting engineering was warmly welcomed :D )

She thought that many of them/their parents think along the lines 'I'm bright, I'm good at science, I know, I'll do medicine'. She thought in quite a few cases it's parental pressure. They want the kudos of saying their DD is doing medicine, in others it is just lack of imagination.
um
Posts: 2378
Joined: Sat May 30, 2009 1:06 pm
Location: Birmingham

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by um »

We have no medics in our family - dh is an engineer as was my father; but ds1 has wanted to be a doctor from an early age.
He has also always been particularly good with children. As a small boy he had baby dolls and a pushchair and I used to get funny looks when I went out with him :lol: . When friends come round he always comes down to look after the babies, and sometimes they've even cried going back to their mums. When ds3 has a meltdown (he's autistic), ds1 is better than my husband or I at calming him down. So I think he'd do a good job as a doctor compared to some pediatricians I've come across :roll: but it is his decision - with 5 children, I am spread too thinly to have much influence on any of them.

I am also dismayed at the 'need' to show work experience, and the realisation that other children will have far better connections to organise this, than we do. I am also aware that ds1 is lucky to be an autumn term baby, but for those who will not turn 16 until the summer, they have a clear disadvantage as I believe children have to be 16 for insurance purposes.
Ds 1 also does not play a music instrument or have any particular sporting aptitude, other than chess, and he is aware that this leaves his 'CV' a bit thin.
He does want to find the work experience. It is frustrating that none of the hospitals have even replied to him but there are quite a few leads here to go on so I've emailed them all to him.
hermanmunster
Posts: 12816
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:51 am
Location: The Seaside

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by hermanmunster »

Um, I hope you get something sorted - one of the problems is that at 16-18 they are still "children" and hence induces all sorts of problems for the trusts / practice eg that everyone in sight has a DBS check (eg not all receptionists at practices have to have them if not chaperoning).
Also can be hard for kids that age to get the confidentiality bit - it can be a hard concept for them not to even mention that they have seen X on their attachment let alone what was wrong with them - something that can worry the people responsible for them.
solimum
Posts: 1420
Joined: Wed May 09, 2007 3:09 pm
Location: Solihull, West Midlands

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by solimum »

One friend's daughter who has (just!) qualified spent a lot of time as a feeding/care assistant at an old people's nursing/residential care home, both before and during her course (once they knew her she was often able to pick up odd shifts to earn extra holiday pay). I'm sure this must have helped her application (she was not a "straight A" candidate) and her experience at dealing with actual patients, as well as getting on with a wide variety of other staff. Certainly look around for somewhere near you, there will be plenty of scope for volunteers too perhaps, but they need to be prepared to take it seriously and to do the less glamorous tasks when requested.
loobylou
Posts: 2032
Joined: Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:04 pm

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by loobylou »

Also in my day at least (20+ years ago :oops: ) different medical schools were different and had their own (often peculiar) grounds for taking one candidate over another. I suspect things are a bit more generic now but I got in based on the fact that I was prepared to resit my A levels to try and get in. At that time something like 10% of UCL medics had failed to get in first time round and were resitters.
Of the medical students I see currently far too many have been pushed that way by parents and/or schools and they are not going to make fabulous doctors which is a great shame.
I suppose I was advocating the voluntary work in a nursing home more as a way of working out whether one really does want to do medicine as much for onself as persuading an interview panel. I have not been involved in uni admissions so don't know in reality what works and doesn't.
I too am delighted that my children consider the whole idea of going into medicine an absolute joke since they see what the working conditions are like...
loobylou
Posts: 2032
Joined: Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:04 pm

Re: Work experience for Medicine

Post by loobylou »

Um I would really really hope that children who a) have wanted to do medicine for ever and ever and b) are bright enough to cope with the course are the ones who get into medicine because those are the ones that will make the best doctors. I would hope that passion for medicine on his UCAS form would stand out more than the fact that he spent a week with a consultant or that he does voluntary work or plays the violin. (I once heard one of the admissions team at my uni say they would scream if they had to read again about someone's grade 8 flute - which is exactly what I wrote on my form!)
Having been involved in deciding on post graduate admissions in the recent past (and this was all on paper, not at interview) the people who did well were the ones who stood out as slightly different from the pack - not necessarily because of what they had done but because of who they were (or at least who they portrayed themselves as).
If he can say that this is all he's ever wanted to do and express that well then that must stand him in good stead I would hope.
Post Reply
11 Plus Platform - Online Practice Makes Perfect - Try Now