No 15 - My medical career goals - following the self help books advice
Tldr
I am using this article to follow advice from a few self help books and describe my ideal future job, in the hope that by making this public it will make my goal more possible.
Good Morning Folks,
I am going to take a few minutes this morning to go off on a slight tangent. Medicine is a funny old career. The career path is so totally different to almost every other non-medical career. Especially in the UK where it is a completely government controlled sector of the economy.
Every doctor or medical student knows the system but it would feel very foreign to anyone else.
For those non-medics who may read this or for those who are considering becoming medical students, the following quick summary will help you with your interviews.
The doctor career pathway:
Apply to medical school and compete with thousands of other high achieving students for a number of rationed places.
Once you are in medical school, you will compete with your friends and peers for exam grades, placements, electives, intercalated degrees, society positions and research projects. So that at the end of medical school you can win a few extra points on the national job application forms. It involves a huge amount of extra time and effort to win a few extra points on these forms, unless you are very lucky and opportunities fall into your lap.
At the end of medical school, every medical student in the country applies for UKFP jobs - foundation jobs. Even though there is currently no “national exam”, everybody is essentially ranked and then put through a ‘sorting hat’ process. Everyone ranks the region and the jobs they would like and then hopes they have out competed everyone else for their top job.
Doctors continue to jump through hoops for their portfolio, annual reviews and training requirements. Then they compete again for Core Training jobs, then again for Speciality Training jobs and then again for GP or Consultants jobs and then at the end of that you probably need to keep competing for other jobs if you want to work somewhere specific or if you want a particularly prestigious job title.
The reason that I have just quickly summarised that training pipeline is because there are so many deadlines, hoops and targets that it is often very difficult to look further ahead. Almost your entire focus needs to be on your current job role, your current performance and then one-step ahead to make sure you tick the boxes to get through to the next stage.
It is very rare that we can a chance to sit back and think… “what do I really want?” Or “where do I see myself in 10 years time?”
I am a big fan of “self-help” books mostly because I realise I am a flawed man and that if I can absorb some wisdom from someone who has already achieved something it is probably faster than working things out by trial and error (my inherent laziness means that I am always looking for efficient improvements - ie.e short cuts).
Self help books often advise a slightly different approach to career management than is the norm in medical training. They often take a more “hocus-locus” approach where if you express you desires to the world, then Karma will work in your favour. It is a type of new-age thinking, mixed with hope and possibly the idea of “network effects. Everyone knows about “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon”, the idea that we are all loosely connected.
The important point from this is that if you expressly make public what you want, then you might be lucky enough for other people to help you go in that direction.
So, here goes…
What am I aiming for?
Teaching - I love teaching and want part of my future job to involve ‘clinical/ bedside teaching’ and I really enjoy workshops/lectures.
Research - The reason I became a doctor in the first place was to be involved with medical research and the scientific process. I am curious about absolutely everything and love nothing more than working on something new that hasn’t really been done before.
Quality improvement - Same as point 2. I love looking at systems and trying to spot where they can be made to work better. Again this goes back to my innate laziness. I would rather think harder to start with and make a process easier rather than having to do something inefficient over and over again.
To be a good doctor - I love this job and couldn’t really imagine doing anything else. Everyone has hard days when they think of leaving medicine but I don’t think I would ever not want to be at least part-time clinically focussed.
Variety - I really want a “portfolio career” that involves a bit of everything, which is exactly why I am training to be a GP. I want to be involved in primary care, maybe some emergency medicine or OOH care, maybe some expedition medicine or austere medicine, maybe volunteer to work in disaster zones or in LMIC health services. That’s the beauty of being a GP. All of this is possible and if you are lucky you can keep up the day job.
Prestige - it feels strange writing this but if I am absolutely honest, then before I eventually retire in about 40 years, I would like to feel that I did some good in the world and that this was recognised. Who knows, it might happen!
If you have read this article and I’m barking mad then you are probably right but I am just going to through this article out into the world, dangle the worm on the hook and see if anything comes of it. 6 degrees of medical academia here I come… fingers crossed.