Why I Chose NOT to Specialise as a Doctor

what is going on guys my name is Kenji and welcome back to my channel hope it's not the first time you're watching one of my videos but just in case it is I'm a doctor working in London and if you guys saw my last video you'll know by now that I've actually decided not to pursue specialty training here in the UK now that's not forever I do eventually do uh intend on specializing in a particular specialy in medicine one day however right now I've actually decided once I finished my Foundation year 2 year to actually take at least one year off as a whole entire break from medicine I will be still practicing medicine in some regard as a part-time locom doctor I'll speak more about that later on the video however in this video I'll be sitting down and telling you guys all of my thoughts my ideas and the reason why I chose this particular route now I did touch on my reasons in the last video that I filmed however it was very brief that was more just telling you about the other options that I was thinking about when it came to my future in medicine in this video I'll be taking you guys into even more detail about why I actually made the decision that I did which is to not pursue specialy training at this point in time what is going on guys my name is Kenji and welcome back to my channel hopefully it's not the first time you're watching one of my videos but just in case it is I'm a doctor and a biomedical science graduate working in London and right now as we speak I'm actually a foundation year 2 doctor I'm on my second last rotation In Obstetrics and Gynecology and I'll be shortly moving on to my next and final rotation of my Foundation year 2E which will be in the acute medical unit now if you're not familiar with how medical training works here in the UK normally you have 5 to six years of medical school you then have 1 to 2 years of a foundation training program U here in the UK that's what we call it in other parts of the world it can be called things like an internship year here in the UK we do that for 2 years and then once we finish these two years we then move on to Specialty training and that can be anywhere from 3 years all the way up to 7 8 9 10 years depending on the specialty that you choose now as I said I actually am finishing off my FY 2year and I've decided to not go ahead and pursue medical training or medical specialy training at this point in time and let's go ahead and talk about the first reason why I did that or actually no let's talk about why I'm making this video first this is not going to be a productive video it's not going to be a video on you know that'll massively change your life however I think there is huge value in sitting down and talking to you guys and sharing my sort of career thoughts and my ideas and plans now if you're someone who wants to get into medical school or wants to pursue medical specialy training you will know there is a standard pathway that everyone takes or or a lot of people do take which is medical school foundation training then specialy training and you will see a few people here and there who do pursue different paths but no one really kind of sits down in a lot of detail and explains to you why they chose a path they did and I feel like if we all shared our knowledge shared our ideas and shared all the sort of paths you can take it will be very beneficial to each other and that is really why I'm making this video if you're someone who's has any interest in medicine at all it's important to you know about the other options that you have in your training as a medical called doctor and that's what I'm doing here I want to share all of my thoughts ideas and plans so you guys can make an informed decision about what you want to do in your future as a medical healthc care professional so that's why I'm making this video the first reason why I actually decided to take this path is just to take a break so it's been a long pathway for me guys if you've been watching my channel I did my a levels of course my you know High School I finished that I went straight onto a biomedical science degree which was 3 years I then did medicine for 5 years then went on to do my foundation training as a doctor for 2 years so since I've been 18 I've been on this path for 10 years really 12 years actually if I include my final years of high school when I chose my you know a level grades hely long path and nowhere in there have I ever taken a break other than the summer holidays that you normally get anyways it's been like a constant you know running on this treadmill and I really want to take a break and just take some time off from this constant treadmill of like chasing a go chasing uh your career I want to take a break and do me for a while um I will like I said be working as a locom doctor I still will be making videos on this Channel about my life as a doctor however I want to take a break and just slow down even if it just means when I finish my Foundation trading to just take 4 to 6 weeks off and do something that I want to enjoy whether that's traveling spending times with friends catching up with family whatever that might be but that's the first reason the second reason why I want to take this break is because of the future earning potential as a locom doctor now if you guys watch my channel I've made so many videos on how much I make as a loc doctor I want to be as transparent as possible for you guys to understand you know how finances work as a doctor but it's also a little bit different as a locom doctor and not a locom doctor like I have been the last few months where I have a full-time job and do locom on the side but working purely as a locom doctor just as loc doctor like I have no full-time contract just looming around uh the country now this has certain benefits there are certain locom jobs that last literally four five 6 months where they'll literally hire you full-time being paid as a full-time locom doctor for full 6 months and that's really right now what I'm trying to find you can be paid anywhere from £45 to £75 an hour most jobs that I'm looking at right now pay around 5055 per hour so if we take a normal 9 to5 job paying £55 an hour I'll show you guys a quick example of how much you can actually earn during this time so 55 * by 8 * by 5 days a week Times by 4 weeks you can earn just like working 95 up to £ 8,800 working as a full-time locom doctor and as I said there are places that have jobs available for literally 4 to 6 months purely working locom and if you want to earn more working in the evenings or working in the weekends you can easily earn over £10,000 a month working as a locom doctor now why do I want to take time out to earn more money so as I said to you guys I've been a student for pretty much my whole entire life other than the last 2 years of working as a doctor which means that during the ages of 18 till about 26 I other than you know what I earned on YouTube in terms of my actual career I earned no money and in fact I spent so much money paying for my living expenses in London when I was in medical school in my last degree I spent a bunch of money and it was so difficult to save any money at all you know I wasn't working a job it's kind of like you know put me back financially in a way compared to some of my friends who've been working the last 6 seven years so I want a chance to just you know work extra uh work a lot save a lot of money and just have that good financial reserve that will then set me up in the future when I do decide to pursue specialy training I will have a financial reserve and be financially better off with more Investments to make make that seven years of specialy training or whatever I choose more comfortable more enjoyable so I want to work that one year work really hard save up as much as I can invest even more and like I said set myself up for the future so when I have children one day and I enter specialy trading it will be a bit easier to manage because of this one year that I've sacrificed reason number two is the earning potential now next reason why I decided to take this path is really and truly the flexibility this is probably one of the biggest reasons why I chose this path this path in working as a locom doctor in an F3 the flexibility right when you're working a full-time job as a doctor it's not like working any other job now this is super important that you guys understand this if you're working a 9 to5 job in let's say I don't know marketing or in research getting time off to do certain things is not that difficult like my friends my partner when they want to take time off they literally go onto their health roster or their kind of you know rostering website and they choose which day they want it could be 9 months in the future it could be tomorrow it could be a couple of weeks away they'll type in the day they want and they will instantly get it of course there are some exceptions like around Christmas time where a lot of people want to take time off but generally speaking you can make plans weeks to months ahead and it's super easy to get time off like you literally just choose the days 6 months from now you email your manager and it's all done it does not work that way in medicine and it is super annoying if I want to take time off in medicine first thing is that I cannot take time off if I am on call so if I'm on call working 12 and 1/ half hour shift or I'm on night shifts you're not allowed to take time off the difficulty is that I'm on call most of the time at least once a week if you're someone like me who has family across the world across the country and if you're flying to Singapore or wherever to take time off or like in my case flying to Kenya to see family you can't go for 4 days right you need to at least go for 1 2 3 weeks to make that trip worth it you're paying all this money you're spending all this time to get there you need to go for a while so for me to go ahead and book time off to see my family is super difficult because I need to by myself Swap all of my on call shifts with my colleagues you have to beg your colleagues and ask them do you mind just covering my shift and I'll cover your shift at a different time to clear off a 2 or 3 week uh period on your timetable when you're not on call that's the first thing the second thing is if the war does not have enough doctors at that time that you want to take time off say there are um people are on night shifts people are on call and there's not enough doctors on the ward to cover cuz there's always people on study leave or night shifts or whatever then they'll make your life extremely difficult to actually get that time off I've mentioned this before on my channel but I've had to fight sometimes just get one day off to go and see my cousin for their birthday my sister for their birthday you know for for graduations you have to fight the the and beg your road manager to let you have time off again adding to the difficulty of trying to get time off and this isn't your fault you know if you're a doctor you deserve to have time off because the W is not able to St themselves is not your fault it's not your problem but they make you your problem unfortunately so getting time off for a significant amount of time is Super difficult you have to swap all of your shifts when you're on call if there's not enough doctors on the ward you're basically told like tough you can't take that time off and it's very very difficult to get that time off you basically have no flexibility or very little flexibility to make matters worse if you let's say have an important event which is 6 months from now which is not on your current rotation it's on your next medical rotation that is almost impossible to get because you need to find who the next rotor manager is on your next medical specialty you need to email them you need to wait for their reply and they then will tell you that look we haven't made the rotor yet or we have made the rotor and you have to just swap your uncle shifts with the next um you know doctors and they won't give you the contact details of how to contact those doctors to swap your shifts it gets super difficult so making plans ahead again is very difficult that's a little bit of a rant I don't want to go on about that too much but working as a doctor on a full-time um contract is very inflexible and I want the flexibility guys as I said it's been so many years of studying and working I want to be able to travel uh at a moment's notice I want to be able to go away for two weeks I want to go and visit different parts of the world see my friends who I haven't seen in such a long time um I want to be able to make YouTube videos as often as I possibly can you know more than once a week if I if I can I want to have that flexibility and most importantly have time to do other stuff in my life that I've not been able to do previously as I said you know medicine you're on this treadmill you sometimes get so focused on your career on your studying on getting into medical school getting that specialty you want to get into and it leaves certain things in your life behind you know generally speaking for doctors that is that's things like getting married getting engaged um you know uh like I said traveling to certain places I've always wanted to see those things that are really important for you as a human being they're really important for your soul that you can't quantify you just don't have time for and sometimes that can be left for the side so I want to have this flexibility I want to you know um work on my family I want to work on my friendships I want to travel the world and that requires flexibility that unfortunately jumping into specialty training will not give me now the next reason why I decided to take this break is to be sure of my path guys like medicine it's it's not a race it really is not a Sprint it is a marathon and you're on this treadmill for a very very long time until you become a consultant and even when you become a consultant there are still Hoops to jump through and I want to be sure of my path you know I love medicine right now I love being a doctor it's such a privilege but I want to be sure that when I jump onto a seven or eight year specialty training program that it is the right thing for me and that is truly what I want to do in my heart for the rest of my life and I'm not just talking about medicine in general I'm also talking about Specialties if I jump into Pediatrics for example to train them I want to be sure that Pediatrics is what I want to do do in the next year I want to pick up as many shifts as I can in Pediatrics I want to also delve back into Dermatology cuz that was also one of my initial interests I want to locer In Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry and get more time in these Specialties to make sure that what I want to do in terms of my specialty is my absolute dream and secondly as I said to make sure that medicine is truly the career path for me and sometimes you need to just take a break you need to take a break to think to breathe to experience more of life you know the next year I might dabble in different Specialties I might dabble in different jobs maybe different career parts and hopefully at the end of this one year or two years who knows I'll be 110% truly sure that this is the path for me you know you can never really truly be sure I love medicine I love medical school I love being a doctor but you can never be 100% sure and for me personally I air on the side of caution and I want to take my time with this beautiful Journey which is medicine and make sure that when I choose a specialty training program for the next 7 years that it will be the one one that is 100% for me I also want to make time to allow space for Serendipity to happen now again when I'm locked into medicine in this career pretty much all of my time is completely taken away in medicine but I often get emails to go speak at conferences to speak on podcasts um to you know to do certain other jobs um which require my expertise in different areas I get all these emails and I always think you know ah I wish I had the time to do this that sounds so cool I would love to do that part time on the side of medicine or I would love to do this my weekends you know and I just don't have the time like right now as a doctor I don't have the time to pursue anything else right now other than making these YouTube videos for you guys and also you know working as a doctor I want to have time to allow Serendipity to happen I want to have time to reply to people on LinkedIn when they offer me different things different jobs different conferences to travel to different areas of the world I want to have that time to see where it takes me you know it probably will take me back to Medicine anyways to specialize because you know I feel like medicine truly is my calling but you never know you know someone in the meantime maybe alongside medicine maybe working part-time as a doctor there may be these other opportunities that could really blossom into something that leads to a life that I truly enjoy and right now I just don't have the time and flexibility to do to pursue those things but I want to have this one year to see what it's like and see where I end up and watch this video back myself to see where the future kji ends up going back to the first point I made actually about taking a break one thing that I didn't mention enough is that I'm also really tired like um I'm not going to sugarco this guys the last two of working as a doctor has been really tiring like I've enjoyed it I've love being a doctor I've learned so many skills but I also am tired like today is the 18th of January and I'm about to go on to four night shifts in a row last week or the sorry the week before last week I was on three night shifts in a row messed up my last week it's going to mess up this week you know my hormones going to be all over the place uh my skin is going to be messed up my immune system be messed up my sleeping schedule my eating schedule every single schedule in my body and in my life will be messed up for the next 4 days in a row cuz I'll be working four night shifts 12 and 1 half hour shifts in a row don't get me wrong I will love part of it but I will not love every second of it you know I will miss being home with my partner I will miss seeing my friends I will miss going to the gym and I'll miss you know feeling like I have a schedule and feeling good in my body this is not all the time this is like you know there are many many times where I'm working 9: to 5 but I also do work night shifts as part of my job and it has definitely weighed on me you know the last 2 years of working nights and working on C shifts it has definitely been tiring I'm super like proud of myself I'm super proud to have gotten this far and to soon be reaching the end of you know my foundation training but at the same time guys we need to balance that uh and it has been tiing time and I want to take some time as well like I said to take a break and also to just kind of recover myself and um you know come back to medicine with a big smile when I eventually want to specialize and commit to seven years down the line now the last thing I want to mention and the last reason as to why I decided to take a year off is this is quite a controversial Point guys so please take what I say with a pinch of salt and do your own research I'm not going to mention it too much in this video I don't want it to be too negative but it is quite well known in the medical community at least from what I you know from what I understand that right now being on a training scheme in the UK or a training program is not necessarily the best time as I said I won't go into too much detail about this first reason being is that pay is quite poor you know that J doctors are currently striking and we have been striking for I think over a year now um secondly the BMA you know the British Medical Association is fighting battles for us as doctors trying to maintain our profession there are many bottlenecks in training you know bottle necks what I mean by that is that it is very competitive to get into a specialty training program right now we're competing against graduates medical graduat from all around the world it is very competitive and even once you get into that you know that uh program getting a consultant job at the end again there's not many consultant jobs going around you may have to stay as register for a while until you get a consultant post there are so many bottle NEX and trading you know to give you you guys a quick example I really love Dermatology but to become a Dermatologist I need to apply for internal medical training first from now like the next I'll have to apply for 2 years of internal medical trading and is competitive to get into and that will require a lot of sacrifice a lot of exams but if I do get into internal medical trading I will work there for 2 years then after that after passing that first initial bottleneck I'll then have to apply for Dermatology trading which is a 4-year training program in dermatology that is another bottleneck it is very competitive Dermatology is super competitive and to get into that if I don't get into it then what would I do you'll basically get stuck at that level in your training and that's another bottleneck you know and once you become a Dermatology traine when you get through the four years of training there is then another bottleneck to get through which is to get a consultant job and you have to fight for jobs and there are not many consultant jobs out there it is just a long you know complicated process Guys these are just to mention a few things you know the low salary the high competition rates the bottle necks are different stages the competition ratios is is being super high and increasing in every single year if you want to find out more about this just go on the BMA websit and see what sort of fights they're fighting for doctors go on to Med Twitter and just look at all the tweets right now that a lot of doctors are complaining about regarding the training programs that we're in I'll leave it that maybe I'll make a separate video about this if you guys want me to and get a bit controversial leave a comment down below about what you guys would like if you want me to delve into that pathway but I'm going to leave it here guys um I hope this video has been informative I hope if you're in medical school or a foundation training or whatever this has helped you think about what you need to be considering when you want to pursue a career in medicine and in specially training if you have any questions at all please leave a comment down below and I'll get back to you thank you so much for watching before you guys leave please take 2 seconds to drop a like on the video make sure you're subscribe with notifications on to never miss another upload and here are a bunch of videos on my channel that you might actually enjoy before you leave I'll see you guys on the next one

Channel: Doctor Kenji

Views: 7,233

Keywords: quitting medicine, quiting medical school, doctors, medical school, medicine, nhs, leaving medicine, why i quit medicine

Id: 4l470NQ4iB0

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024