when I mentioned to colleagues in the NHS that I was helping with admissions interviews for medical students, several responded with the same wry smile and weary shrug: “Do they know what they’re getting into?” Anyone working with the health service over the past few decades has seen the job conditions get tougher, salaries stagnate and idealism erode within a crumbling system. Brexit, Covid, austerity and the rise in the cost of living haven’t helped.
From the students’ perspectives, they’ve gone through a lot to get here too. Not just the usual high-level academic performance and résumé-building either.This is a group who dealt with school closures and lockdowns during impressionable years, many come from crowded schools with little support and coaching, and yet they’ve found a way to persevere.
Having spent years teaching in medical schools and talking to students, my main feeling is hope. They’re smart, respectful and polite, with interesting backgrounds and ideas. Rather then being put off by the pandemic, some have been drawn to medicine as of the key role of the NHS during those tough years, and remember joining the Thursday “clap for carers” and putting rainbow signs in their windows at home. Quite a few are keen to get into public health research and want to combine clinical and academic careers.
these are young people who could walk into finance, tech, consulting, influencing … careers where their intelligence and work ethic would be rewarded with salaries unthinkable in medical pay packets. They could choose a different life. But they have chosen medicine.
What lies ahead isn’t pretty: night shifts, weekends on-call and a future of working in intense environments. This could be in A&E or surgery, where treatment is literally about life and death. Or working in a GP practice where they’ll meet patient after patient where the suffering isn’t only medical, but also social – financial precarity, loneliness, bad housing – and they’ll be expected to find a solution. As Covid showed us, it could be working through a pandemic and watching your colleagues get sick and die (sometimes because of inappropriate PPE), or burn out and walk away from medicine.
And don’t even mention the pay: after all those years of training, pay starts at £18.62/hour in England, even though with overtime over nights and weekends this can go up to £20-30/hour. Yes this is a good wage, but is it in line with the qualifications, responsibilities and expertise the job requires? They used to be officially called “junior doctors”, but the newly introduced title “resident doctor” is more appropriate given they’re often the first point of contact for sick patients and have independent clinical responsibilities. The allocation system for resident doctors means that they can’t commit to living in a specific city or location: they can note their preferences but could end up being placed in hospitals h
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