Psychology to Medicine - Ed Gee | PostGradMedic

getting experience spending time with patients around patients silly things just like learning how to talk to people on a day-to-day basis learning how to talk to patients learning how to see how they're doing today and learning how to share their horrible moments but also their great moments the things that you want to be able to do as you move forward in a medical career you can see it from a much closer angle hi everyone my name is EDG I'm a first year medical student here at Warwick University well I've just just finished my first year I'm heading to second year now and I've just come to give a talk all he's asked me to come in today first got into university doing psychology I studied psychology up at Durham University it was really really interesting degree I really enjoyed it at the time I had no designs on doing medicine I had no concept that would be what I ended up doing so did psychology for three years enjoyed it but I found I enjoyed mostly the aspects of it that tended towards the biological rather more the more kind of grounded in what that is anatomy but I didn't really realize was at the time I just thought of it as being biological so I ended up doing a master's down in Bristol studying neuro psychology which was great and actually the at the time didn't realize how good it would be really actually ended up pushing me more towards doing medicine it was more clinically based than my undergraduate degree was and it was lectured by a wide range of individuals involved in neurology and actually the lectures I enjoyed the most the ones that were pushing me more towards doing sort of more the ones given by doctors or neurophysiologists or psychiatrists so at that time I saw I just by chance came across the fact that graduate entry medicine was even a thing that point never even considered it so that's interesting then you haven't always wanted to be a doctor no no idea whatsoever when I went to university that medicine would be what I ended up doing I had vague designs on doing something clinic II know something clinical sort I suppose I thought I'd end up being a clinical psychologist I'd really enjoyed psychology at a level and figured it was as good as anything to do at university I knew I wanted to go to university wasn't necessarily 100% sold and anything but medicine was the last last thing I considered didn't even yeah didn't think of it I didn't have the grades even if I'd wanted to do it then but I I didn't even cross my mind how old are you now at and how old will you be when that changes to dr. Edie so I'm 26 years old now I was 25 when I started my first year here at work so I'll be 30 when I graduate so what did you do in that span of time then between finishing your master's degree and coming to medical school so when I finished my Master's down in Bristol I ended up staying down in Bristol and at that point I still wasn't convinced I wanted to be going into medicine I still had designs on being a clinical psychologist I still had thoughts that I wasn't sure I was I saw myself at a sort of a fork in the road and I had to decide which which path I wanted to take so my way of figuring that decision out was to go work in a psychiatric hospital so I applied across loads of different hospitals but I applied to go work originally just as a bank support worker down in a psychiatric hospital near Bristol I went into that job having the idea that I would see both clinical psychology and medicine psychiatry at work and what each job looked like day to day and I'd have a chance to talk to both professionals or both both branches and I can get a really good idea of what both had to offer and I did that well I did I worked on the bank for a year and then I worked permanently on a particular ward for about a year as well and fairly early on in those two years I decided that medicine was the path I wanted to go down and that's when I started looking into the the route and and what I would have to do in order to get to where I am now what's been your favorite part of the Warwick course in first year so it's been very different actually the Warwick course perhaps and I expected but it's obviously very different from my first or second degree I've really enjoyed the anatomy teaching I suspected I did enjoy anatomy before I came here but the quality of it the and the quantity of it as well has been really extraordinarily good it's very unusual for any medical students to get really a look at recently deceased tissue or individuals that have recently passed away there have been Frank basically professionally dissected for our purposes and certainly we had a revision session at the end of the year that was remarkably good it was I I almost wish I'd known I'd been able to have that experience again a bit later on in my career perhaps I would have been male you know who wouldn't would have understood more would have been able to take even more out of it but as it was it was remarkably useful and certainly coming from something like psychology where you maybe have a bit of a concept of physiology and maybe have a bit of a concept of how cells work and things are that Anatomy is really one of those areas that is quite alien we don't learn again speaking for myself I didn't know a lot of anatomy bits of neuroanatomy but that was about it didn't really didn't know very much so I was relying on the course to be very good in providing materials for me to learn and in that respect it's excelled itself so and even when the live fresh tissue isn't available the plastic specimens are always fantastic they really do help demonstrate some of the concepts you've been learning about but can be very difficult to visualize when presented on a screen or in a textbook seeing it being able to turn the specimen around being able to ask questions of an expert effectively Anatomy inordinately useful in in helping develop your knowledge and contextualize what you're actually learning about day to day or or going through the week on a Friday at the end of the week really helping just dial in everything that you've come across what's the biggest key difference you've noticed between studying for your psychology degree and now studying medicine certainly this year in the first year there is far less time to get your head around some of the concepts that you've been taught I found in my psychology degree um I can't speak for any other University but certainly at Durham the contact time was very minimal I think I had 12 hours was about average between over the three years gave you a lot of time to go over lectures perhaps get your head around sometimes the concepts and them were quite tricky whereas with medicine the pace is far far quicker you've got far more contact hours you've got far less free time so adapting to that and trying to use my free time or the spare time I had to go over bits that we'd learn that week had to use that far more wisely the material wouldn't necessarily any harder in fact in many many ways I'd say it was easier but there was just so much of it which was was so different to psychology that that required a bit of a culture change for me it sounds like you've had a really good amount of clinical experience then so based on your understanding and what you've seen what's the difference between someone a psychologist in that clinical field and a medical practitioner my frustration with what the day-to-day job of a clinical neuropsychologist looked like having done my master's degree was it involved delivering a lot of pen paper tests it involved a lot of statistical analysis and a lot of it didn't involve a lot of patient work it didn't seem to and I I've only seen a thin sample of clinical neuropsychologists but the work that I saw them doing was intellectually interesting to me but didn't really have the the right blend I suppose of intellectual curiosity and patient fronting time certainly when I was working on the wards and I saw what both had to offer I suppose medicine offered a far broader path you know it once you have managed to get on and do a medical degree the the road really opens up there's so many different ways you can go and there's so many different areas of Medicine you can explore that really appealed to me whereas I feel even doing a clinical psychology degree does put you in a particular position you're you're you're ending up going and doing one fairly specific thing there are a few avenues within that but you're more tightly constricted in terms of the angles you can go down so over the course of this first year we've been exposed to you know various kinds of medicine have you got any thoughts on your future or a specialty so I always tell people it is a bit of a cop-out answer really but I always tell people that I don't really want to die myself into a specialty before I've seen some of the realities of what different specialties offer on a day to day basis you have to have an overall affinity for it you have to be excited by what you're going into but I think for example surgery I think that the idea of surgery is quite exciting to a lot of people but the realities of it though a lot of the challenges that it poses and a lot of the really sacrifices you're gonna have to make in order to get to the point of being a surgeon and even then when you are a surgeon there's a lot of sacrifice involved and I think until I've really seen the day-to-day of some of the options that I'm weighing up it's difficult to make a decision but I will answer that that isn't a cop-out right way and I do like the idea of surgery having having spoken about how much I enjoyed Anatomy my brain works in a very sort of machine based way I like to say but I like I like knowing how things work and how mechanically things can function and how those can go wrong and I think that appeals very well to surgery where you need to have a kind of overarching concept of how a certain area works but also how pathology in that area can affect the wider system as a whole potentially potentially ornithopod but I don't know I'd be really interested to see a few of the branches of surgery in action weirdly vascular surgery seems quite interesting I can see this video coming back to haunt me in 20 years time so I'll hold off from giving a definitive answer but and I haven't I haven't given up on the idea of doing psychiatry I mean it it's a son usual branch of medicine it really is unlike any other branch of medicine it's tough I think it is challenging you know there's there's risks involved that aren't very obvious you know if you make a mistake if you make a mistake in surgery it's usually apparent immediately whereas if you make a slightly risky choice and psychiatry you may not see the results of that for what weeks potentially it's it's a slightly it's a different type of challenge and again I'm looking forward actually in the years coming now to spending a bit of time on psychiatric wards but from a medical perspective rather from a nursing perspective in a bit more of an idea of how we can diagnose and treat some psychiatric conditions I think most of us probably agree now that being able to have some downtime and relax and not study medicine for awhile is really important so what sorts of things do you get up to Joe so it's really drilled into us as medical students and indeed as medical professionals that you do need to have a life outside of medicine and I couldn't agree more this year has been really tough it's been really enjoyable and really rewarding but it has been very intensive finding time every week trying to carve out some time and spend some time doing things I enjoy that aren't anything to do with medicine has been really crucial I've been very fortunate to have people that have gotten seen on the weekends so I spent a lot of time with my parents Dannan and Allen Hampshire with my girlfriend with whoever friends friends and family generally it's sometimes really nice to remove yourself from the bubble of medicine that kind of surrounds surrounds Borak medical school and indeed every every Medical School and it is it can get a bit tiresome when you when people keep telling you that that's that's what you have to do but like I couldn't agree more that actually finding yourself something an activity you can do that is nothing to do with medicine whatsoever that you you enjoy and you take pleasure in is really crucial and surviving certainly the first year medicine but arguably your entire medical career if there was one key takeaway message that you would give to people in your position coming from that psychology background to medicine what do you say so the one piece of advice I'd probably give to aspiring medics that are doing psychology at the moment although many of you will probably be impatient many of you probably want to be here as soon as possible I couldn't I couldn't recommend more strongly going and getting some practical work experience working in a clinical environment is as much as I enjoyed my psychology degree in as much as hopefully as stood me in good stead throughout my life in terms of relevance to this degree though the two years I spent working on wards have been far more relevant than the four years I spent learning in in classrooms about the brain and psychology and neuropsychology I would really strongly recommend doesn't have to be two years like I did it doesn't even have to be a year you could just be a summer but but getting experience spending time with patients around patients learning silly things just like learning how to talk to people on a day-to-day basis learning how to talk to patients learning how to see how they're doing today and learning how to share their horrible moments but also their great moments you know the things that really really the things that you want to be able to do as you move forward your medical career you can see it from a much closer angle from somewhere like a support work or a healthcare assistant role have you found either your psychology degree or your Master's useful at all when it's come to making the change to medicine sort of if I'm completely honest it was it was less used to me than perhaps other degrees have been to certain people so doing something I could buy a medical degree for example obviously you touched on ground that you would touch on the medicine but I think a lot can be made of that and really coming to medicine as a challenge for anyone either certainly at work we've got people that have come from all walks of life and probably psychology has helped me more than it's helped someone that's maybe done sort of French and business for example it's that's a very very different kettle of fish so has it helped me yes it's given me some ideas of concepts but it's probably helped me more actually with my interactions with patients and understanding there are a lot more elements and sometimes people's medical concerns aren't top of their list they're more worried about psychological concerns or some of their social concerns you know they're not they're not really fussed as long as they can get to their daughter's fifth birthday party or something like that and that can seem perhaps alien if you come from a solely biological perspective if you're only looking through a biological lens but having an extra lens in my arsenal having an egg another kind of kind of filter through which I can judge or not even judge but view behavior and and understand people's behavior and beliefs is really useful III wouldn't understate how useful that has been but probably the most useful thing for me in terms of a day-to-day has been working has been working in a clinical context as I said I couldn't couldn't recommend that more even if it's just for six weeks or so there even if it's just spending a bit of time doing something I'd really recommend that that's been really useful to me in my preclinical year so I can only imagine it's gonna be even more useful next year and the years after when we spend a lot more time patient pacing so that's that's really it that's sort of the end of the interview I have given Olli my email address I'm happy for anyone that's studying psychology at the moment or it's even thinking of studying psychology and going on to do medicine feel free to get in contact if you've got any specific questions I'm more than happy to get back to you I'll do my best to do it when I can if you want to ask now we're in this summer period I'll be much better at applying than I will be when we're deep in in our second year but I also I just want to wish everyone good luck it it is stressful I remember applying myself and you don't know how it's gonna be it's all very confusing but Olli is a fantastic resource and and if you've followed along with his his materials you'll be in a really good place and you'll know a lot more than I did before I apply it but I just wanted to make it clear that it's it's very doable having done psychology and work I can't I'm sure it's the same other universities but certainly I have felt no less prepared having done psychology that I would have done having done another degree and I've I don't regret my choice for a moment I had no point in the year even though it's been really challenging at times I've never regretted my decision and I I am very happy I made the decision I did and I'm really glad to be here so good luck 21 if you've got any questions or you're thinking to apply to Warwick do let us know and if you are a plane to work add I look forward to seeing in the future I've ad was a way that I wanted to be a clinician when I was older but I really enjoyed doing psychology sorry I'm tagged by by a fly

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Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 25 2018