Perhaps more than any other profession, the possibility of going into medicine will take some hard thinking, mostly about yourself. Do you want to become involved in potentially life-threatening situations? Will you be able to interact well enough with medical teams to come to instant professional judgements? Are you naturally caring and compassionate? Do you possess the values of integrity and confidentiality?
After getting your medical degree and taking the two-year Foundation training programme, you can register with the General Medical Council (GMC) and start to seriously consider what medical speciality you wish to pursue. However, whatever you decide, you will need to do a further three years training for GPs and some five to seven years training for other professional areas.
What does a doctor actually do in the world of modern healthcare?
You will be working in a hospital or a general practice, where the largest group of GPs work.
In general practice, you will be caring for patients who have a wide range of ailments. You will examine patients and make a diagnosis about what is wrong with them, based on your medical knowledge and professional judgement. You will then need to proscribe treatment to cure their illness or prevent that illness from getting any worse.
You may be visiting patients at home where necessary. You will need an extensive knowledge of modern IT technology. Doctors now use computers regularly for the management of patients’ records, and make use of very advanced equipment, for example, for key-hole surgery in hospitals. Of course, you may work as a doctor in other occupational environments. This could be the armed forces, the forensic service or the prison service.
In hospital, you will have the opportunity to access a wider range of specialist areas of medicine. You will be treating patients who have been referred to you by their GP, and clearly will face a number of different challenges, due to the ‘accident and emergency’ nature of the work of a hospital, and also due to the more complex diagnosis and prescription that will undoubtedly be required.
Specialisation
However, how do you decide what is going to be your special area?
Each branch of medicine has its own Royal College, from which you can find plenty of useful information concerning their branch and any additional training or special qualifications required. These cover, for example, anaesthesia, psychiatry, dental surgery, ophthalmology, paediatrics, radiology, and of course surgery, in perhaps the brain or the heart.
Your final choice will depend on the interest you have developed in one or more different areas of medicine during your long period of training. And, you will want to develop your non-clinical skills to enable you to progress through the medical hierarchy, perhaps in teaching, research or management. This may involve further postgraduate work.
If you are prepared to spend many years studying, training and being assessed, and really want to make a difference to the quality of people’s lives, then medicine might well be the career for you.