Why I LEFT Biomedical Science (For Medicine..)

what is going on guys my name is kenji welcome back to my channel hopefully it's the first time you're watching one of my videos but just in case it is i'm a fourth year medical student and biological in a biomedical science graduate studying key scholar london and as some of you guys might know um right before i started medical school i actually did three years of my biomedical science degree as you guys can see uh behind me but i spent three years in university studying biomedical science before i ended up making the decision to switch to medical school after i graduated and there's a number of reasons why i did this i definitely put a lot of kind of thought into the decision of you know becoming a doctor and in this video i'll be telling you guys the exact reasons as to why i decided to leave biomedical science and you know kind of science behind and pursue a career as a doctor instead of a research scientist i want to start by saying that by no means am i talking down on biomedical science it's an absolutely amazing degree i loved it so much and i'm sure i would have had a happy life in biomedical science as well having said that as well loads of my friends who are still in biomedical science now are very very successful in their careers so it is a great thing to go into but i'll just speak about the personal reasons as to why i chose to not pursue a career in biomedical science i also want to say that the only kind of experience that i had in biomedical science was mainly working in research laboratories doing research with cells i haven't actually worked anywhere else in the industry so i'll purely be speaking about what it's like being a research scientist doing research in a lab in comparison to medicine so with that being said let's go ahead and get started so the first reason i decided from a medic instead of biomedical scientist purely is because i realize that if you go into medicine to become a doctor you could actually be both a doctor a clinician and also a scientist as well during my time in biomed as i did work experience the labs and as i worked in the labs i came across so many doctors who actually ran their own labs and had scientists working with them and also for them that to me sounded absolutely amazing the ability to do both to kind of like help patients today you know treat patients today get that kind of like immediate burst of um you know um pleasure from actually helping people today and also working towards helping people in the future for me just sounded so so so amazing and the idea of being both a you know doctor and a scientist together for me sounded much better and much more appealing to me than just being a scientist on its own and even now as you guys can see behind me over there that's my first publication i had in research which i got in my second year of medical school so i've actually continued to engage in research and you know flown to taiwan to greece you know to loads of different places around the world to continue my research projects go check out those videos you haven't already um but i've actually continued to engage in research as well and if you become a doctor you're definitely able to continue being a scientist as well if you wanted to and that's the first reason all right i want to quickly start the video here guys just to say please take two seconds out of your day to give the video a thumbs up make sure you subscribe as well and turn notifications on so you know whenever i'm posting it helps so so much this whole youtube algorithm thing really is annoying and it really helps these videos reach more people and inspire more people as well back to the video the second reason i decided to continue medicine is to do this kind of career stability as soon as you become a medical student you straight away know that in five years time when you graduate you'll be guaranteed a reasonably well paid job and you definitely will have that position waiting for you you know exactly what your path in life will look like for the next five to ten years uh if you do already know what you want to specialize in and that for me you know the career stability combined with the financial stability looks so appealing to me uh when i was in biomedical science when i looked into career choices art biomedical science to be honest with you i wasn't entirely sure what i wanted to do the career prospects look so heterogeneous and just so different and i'm sure if i did put in more time into researching what i wanted to do after and what you can do after then i would have found you know maybe a job that is stable and is financially stable as well um but in my research i kind of felt like you know medicine versus biomed at the time medicine for me seemed like the more kind of financially stable and more um careers and stable job compared to biomed again this is controversial and this is just personal to me but also the same time i met so many scientists um you know in biomedical science who were my you know supervisors and friends as well who told me that right now they do have a contract you know to run this lab but the only way they'll be able to keep this lab here and keep their job is if they continue to release research constantly that is you know groundbreaking and contributing the fields and as long as they can do that they'll have their job but that contract was only for a couple of years every couple years they had to apply for funding to continue to have their recess job in the lab and that for me just was a bit scary again that's only talking about one aspect of biomedical science which is the research aspect there's loads of different jobs you can do but for me that's probably what i would have wanted to go into and that's another reason that kind of took me away from biomedical science adding to that point as well when i was in college a lot of my teachers in chemistry and biology actually had phds themselves and i asked them you know you have a phd how come you started going to teaching you know why didn't you go into research or working in the industry and what they said a lot of times was that they actually did have a lab they were running themselves at a like well-known university they had a master's degree a phd degree and what they told me is that they actually lost their funding for their lab again because they weren't able to you know continue with the high kind of research output um and for various reasons they actually end up closing the lab and becoming a teacher instead what i have been told as well this may not statistically be right but what i have been told is that getting the actual funding to become a um you know a principal investigator or the leader of a lab is an extremely hard i think the percentages were like less than 10 so if you want to go into research to run your own lab the chances of that are also extremely competitive again there are loads of different things you can do in you know in research um but that's another reason as to why i decided to become a doctor instead of a biomedical scientist the next reason i chose to do medicine over biomedical science was i felt like the kind of day-to-day life of a scientist just didn't suit my personality and i was more suited of medicine and don't get me wrong i absolutely love working as a scientist and i have spent literally months at a time working in lab with myself following protocols doing experiments i absolutely love all of those things but to do that every single day for my whole entire life as a lab scientist for me just didn't kind of match up with what i wanted to do day to day from my experience in working in labs the times where i've really really enjoyed working in the lab has been to do with people who i meet in the lab i've had amazing experiences in the lab where i've had so much fun day to day because i've had really really interesting and kind colleagues but i've also had extremely you know bad experiences as a lab because people i've been with have been quite on social or sometimes i'm even on my own in the lab and that for me was quite difficult the reason being is because working in a lab is very very independent in my opinion of course you do have like research meetings you do talk to people and you're in the offices and over lunch time but your actual time in the lab can sometimes be um you know very independent you know you and your cells all day perpetting all day and sometimes you may have a lab partner sometimes there may be other people in the lab but actually also sometimes you can be the only one in the lab working their day to day and that can be a very very independent thing again that's a very good thing if you're more introverted you know some people actually like following protocols working yourselves you know being very independent but for me personally what i actually love is to talk to different people to meet different people to be very to be very social and i love having my day change every single day and doing what i'm doing change every single day so the last reason being that working and love for me just didn't suit my personality and for me what actually sounds way better is being a medic again seeing patients every single day change their lives being sociable for people every single day and then having you know maybe half a day or two or three days out of the week dedicated to time in the lab doing research that for me sounds absolutely perfect i still want to continue doing research as i told you guys i still love you know working labs and stuff like that but for me doing that seven days a week just didn't match who i was so my ultimate goal one day as well would be to you know do some research in a lab spend some time there but also make sure that i'm not spending too much time in my cells going crazy also spending some time meeting patients and meeting people as well and that's another reason why i chose to pursue medicine over biomedical science the next reason as to why i decided to pursue medicine is because medicine is not just a degree it's actually a passport and what i mean by that i will explain later on but you know for me personally i've lived all around the world i've lived in kenya i've lived in japan i've lived in so many different places and some of you guys might know that from my videos um but i don't exactly know where i want to be in the next 10 years from now i know that i want to be a medicine i don't want to i don't want to be a doctor for sure but in regards to where i actually will be living you know raising kids having family stuff like that i'm not entirely sure um so for me it's really really important to have my geographical borders open and keep my options open in regards to where i want to live in the future the amazing thing about medicine and being a doctor is you can pretty much guarantee yourself a job in any single country in the entire world bar america but if you do want to go to america you can set the entrance exams but you literally have a passport to go into any single country in the world to work because obviously healthcare and you know being a doctor is needed around the whole entire world that ability to provide service to people wherever you are in the world especially because of the fact that i'm you know multicultured my parents are from different countries my family lives all around the world so the ability to move whenever i want to to a different place and have a job there is so so crucial to my career of course you know being a biomedical scientist as well you can get jobs elsewhere in the world but to get a job as a biomedical scientist somewhere else in the world is one more difficult and two you're probably more restricted to the developing countries which do invest in research and do have laboratories if you work in rather than developing countries and that for me is really important because i may want to go back to kenya one day for example i'm not entirely sure um which is a developing country so for me um having the ability to travel to any country in the world whether that might be a developing or a developed country is so so important for me personally the last reason that i chose to go into medicine over biomedical science is because i didn't want to be limited by my job not saying that you are limited by meds but definitely medicine you're able to do more than you know the job title of being a doctor is for me personally i didn't want to just be a doctor i didn't want to just be a scientist i want to be a doctor a scientist a teacher a businessman a philanthropist a medical policy changer there's so many different things that i want to do in this world not just to do with science itself and i felt like being a doctor really gives you that capability for example one of my interests as well is maybe doing some global health work also maybe working with doctors without borders so having that degree being medicine really opens more doors than it would close the thing with having a medicine degree is that it's a very relatable degree it's a very transferable degree and it's a degree that's highly sought after by many different companies so if you decide actually i want to you know move out of medicine a little bit i want to kind of you know dip my toes in the financial sector go into finance economics you know wherever you want to go having a medicine degree will put you in a really good position no matter what kind of field you want to work in as well so for me combining the fact that i can live anywhere in the world and also being able to you know do more than just be a doctor and go into like different types of interests i have was so so important and was one of the reasons why i chose to be a medic instead of biomedical scientist so that is pretty much it guys i know it's been a really long video but i hope it's given you guys some food for thought as to you know the things you might want to consider when you're looking into getting away from biomedical science or maybe studying biomedical science or maybe going into something like medicine as well there's loads of different factors you have to take into account like i mentioned you know where you want to live in the future uh what sort of day-to-day you know life you want to have there's so many things to think about and i hope that this has made it easier for you guys in regards to making your decision about what you want to do in the future if you have any questions at all um you know whether that might be in biomed or medicine or just generally please leave a comment down below and let me know what you guys think but thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Kenji Tomita

Views: 3,238

Rating: 4.9689922 out of 5

Keywords: medicine compared to biomedical science, medicine vs biomedical science, biomedical science, king's college london, university of birmignham, university of birmingham biomedical science, biomedical science application, king's college london biomedical science, biomedical science uk, medical school london, st georges medical school london, medical science jobs, biomedical science jobs

Id: pCCt-e5trsA

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021