On Being a Medic

by Anonymous

Being a doctor is hard. Anyone who actually is a doctor will tell you that. It’s not a perception, it’s a reality. The system in place acts to hinder not help, they act to push people to the limits. But that’s what I love. That’s what most doctors love. They love the fear, the stress, the ability to help those in need, and some just love the job for what it is. But, my god, is it hard to get there.

There are thirty-three medical schools in the UK, with enough places for 6,071 medical students. 6,071. That’s it. 6,071 people if not less will graduate at the end of a 5-year degree with the ability to practice medicine. Yet 14,420 people applied for medicine in that cohort. That’s 8,349 medical applicants that get rejected. Most of them have the qualifications, they have what it takes, but they don’t have a place. That’s the reality.

Now, arguably this is my perception, wanting to be a future medic and all, but it’s simply not enough. With the NHS crying out for doctors, and with Brexit about to put even more strain on the understaffed prospects of the system, it staggers me that people are not more clued up on the situation currently occurring. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that the number of medical school places will increase by 25% from 2018. In a nutshell: the expansion in training places will rise from 6,000 to 7,500 a year to make the NHS ‘self-sufficient’ in doctors by 2025. Yet, I have to argue, this is a totally unrealistic view, and one that I doubt will even happen with the current state of the labour party.

Yes, they may be increasing places, but people still have to get them. When you apply to be a medic, you have to take the BMAT and/or the UCAT, on top of getting A* A  A at least at a level, on top of sitting an interview, on top of getting an interview offer in the first place. There are some drastic hoops that you need to jump through, before you even start university. For people like me, people who want to be doctors, your willing to do whatever it takes. Just sometimes, it would be nice if the systems that aid those applicants, actually aided them. The UCAT and the BMAt are designed to make sure you have what it takes. The UCAT consists of verbal reasoning; assesses the ability to critically evaluate information presented in a written form, decision making; assesses the ability to make sound decisions and judgements using complex information, quantitative reasoning; assesses the ability to critically evaluate information presented in a numerical form, abstract reasoning; assesses the use of convergent and divergent thinking to infer relationships from information and situational judgement; measures the capacity to understand real world situations and to identify critical factors and appropriate behaviour in dealing with them. Yet these are things measured by a test in the hope they give a good indicator of how you will cope in the health service. What they don’t do is test for empathy, test for your ability to deal with stress, instead they test for your robotic qualities, and hope that the interview will test for the human ones. To me, you could get the highest score possible in the test, and still be a shocking doctor due to your mannerisms or ability to respond in an actual hospital environment, not in a simulated test.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, some have to take the BMAT as well, consisting of 3 sections, section one testing all the skills the UCAT tests, section 2 testing your GCSE science knowledge and section 3 testing your ability to communicate ideas through written work under instense timed conditions. Now for me, this draws some questions. Why, if you have taken GCSEs and got the grades to prove it, do you need to answer GCSEs science questions? If you’ve come out with nines or eights in the sciences, then it makes me wonder why they make you do this again. Also, you have thirty minutes for section 3, and are expected to “to select, develop and organise ideas, and to communicate them in writing, concisely and effectively.” Now, for me, thirty minutes is not enough to do justice to this. Yes, some may argue that it shows you have the ability tp pick out the key pieces of information and write about them, but if you struggle with writers block, or if you can’t think of anything to say, it can cause massive struggle.

For these tests, you can only sit them once in an admissions cycle. So if you screw up, then your chances of getting into uni for medicine that year are basically scuppered, no matter what grades you get. This is why I think we should scrap this admissions testing. If you can sit through MMIs or a traditional interview, as well as achieving the highest grades possible, then why is the testing needed. If you can’t cope being a medic, you will leave, no matter how well you performed in a test. In some ways, the testing acts to hinder rather than help, causing medics to work harder to prepare for them as well as everything else they need for the admissions process. Some may get overtly stressed about them, about what they can provide, and cause them to fail despite the fact they would be better doctors than many people who score highly in the tests themselves.

For years it has been who you know, not what you know when getting work experience. For me, it was more of a lot of hard work and persistence. Some places want you to be 18, but by the time that  comes around, you’ve already had your interview, or your offer and are now working on those all important final grades. Some people pay thousands for courses just to have some sort of edge in an interview. On top of work experience, you need volunteering, you need to be well-read on health news. On top of being a teenager. It’s enough to drive anyone mad. For me, I greatly enjoyed my work experience, shadowing doctors on a ward. I had people who were willing to talk to me, willing to explain, but neither did they sugar-coat their lifestyle – they were honest, and sometimes that’s what you need. Sometimes you need to experience the harsh reality that not everyone makes it or you will treat people who you don’t want to, but you have to carry on, do your job and that’s what I found so refreshing. In fact, I would urge anyone who wants to pursue a career as a medic to take the opportunity to experience life in a hospital, but the actual nitty-gritty, not the glorified perception given by some people to ensure you become a medic. Sometimes, you just want someone to tell you the brutal truth.

For me, sometimes I struggle. Sometimes, like many other medics I know, all you want to do is go home and sleep. You don’t want to work, you don’t want to do anything remotely educational. Yet, we do it anyway. We persevere, we work hard for that all-important offer. But sometimes, we all just want to be teenagers. I think this highlights a flaw not just in medicine, but in the education system itself – forcing you to make career prospects at the age of 16, choosing what you could end up doing for the rest of your life after being alive for not even a quarter of it. Sometimes, it would be nice for the department of education and other bodies to remember we are teenagers, and we should get to have the freedom that comes with it before we commit ourselves to lives of work. Sometimes, we should be able to let our grades slip, let ourselves be free and enjoy what life has to offer, rather than constantly sitting with our noses in books – but that’s another issue all together.

Medicine is all about perseverance, all abut working hard no matter what the system throws at you. Its on of the reasons I’m so passionate about it. I can’t wait to get up, to go to work, and help different people with different problems every day. I’m fascinated by how the body works, by how people work. It amazes me that doctors have the power to literally fight death, to play God and mean that some people will get to live another day