WHY YOU SHOULDN'T STUDY MEDICINE | the negative parts of becoming a doctor

why you shouldn't study medicine hold up a second you might be thinking tash you study medicine you're now in your fifth year at medical school surely it can't be that bad medical school is full of ups and downs and for me the ups have far outweighed the downs but nevertheless i think it's really important that as i speak a lot about my life at medical school on social media that i share the not so great parts of medicine and the things that i think that you should be aware of before you sign up to a career in medicine this video is not meant to discourage anybody from studying medicine as i think and really believe it's a great career but i believe that when embarking on a five or six year degree and a degree that is quite vocational in the sense that it leads to your career i think it's really important that you make an informed decision about whether it is the right degree and career path for you so here we go grab yourself a cup of tea and let's talk about the three reasons why i think you shouldn't study medicine so the first one is the length of time of the degree so at some universities it is a five-year course sometimes it is six years this is a super long time if you're starting university at the age of 18 like i did this is over a quarter of your life that you've already lived that you're now going to spend at university after however many years of education so far now the length of time might not put you off or be such a bad thing as yeah being a student is fun you're learning so much in those five to six years that you probably wouldn't want it to be any shorter so that you feel prepared enough to be a doctor but i think it's the consequences of the degree being so long that are a bad side to studying medicine for example this is five to six years of paying for university fees of living your life without a form of income which is difficult now while it is true that you can get student loans you can get nhs bursaries later on into your degree for most students this doesn't cover their total living costs so it doesn't cover all of their rent all of their food all of their books also i think it's important to say that although in the first four years you may get a student loan from student finance the key word there is loan this does not mean that it is free money and student finance is just paying for you to have a great time and they've given you that money given you the thousands of pounds and they're saying see you later you are building interest on that money from day one and as soon as you start earning money you will be paying that back and it can build up to be a lot of money the other side of it is that many of your friends who will have done a three or four year degree will start earning money pretty much as soon as they graduate and if you're at a london uni like me and you're around people who work in london their incomes are going to be quite good their incomes are probably going to be higher than you will earn in the next 10 years which can be a little challenging and a little difficult to stomach and i found this really hard i felt a little bit selfish i saw my friends buying their parents nice presents for christmas i saw my friends treating their parents to nice holidays to treating their other halves to nice things and i still can't do this which can be difficult but i have learned that it's definitely not selfish and i am privileged that my parents are able to to live comfortably without me supporting them which i know for some students is not the case so i think the length of time and the consequences that go with it such as money are a big downside to medicine and if it's not a downside for you it's still definitely something to be aware of the second reason why you shouldn't study medicine follows on from my first point quite nicely and this is that i think that you could earn more money in a different profession let me explain my reasoning for this so if you get into medicine chances are that you've got a really good set of grades not only grades but you're really skilled at a co-curricular activity or two so you're going to be quite a all-rounder and good candidate for a lot of jobs now i am not saying that professions like law like finance like a lot of things are super easy to get into and i'm not saying that they don't come without their drawbacks and their challenges i'm simply saying that you could probably earn more money in a different profession so if money is your driving force for doing medicine i would stay clear of studying it now i just also want to mention a disclaimer here because i often find it really awkward talking about money and my salary as a future doctor because i do not want to come across as saying it is a bad salary because that's definitely not the case the salary of a doctor is far above the national average salary i am just saying that it is all relative to what you could earn and i think it's really important to mention as i know that in a lot of countries doctors are extremely well paid and are at the same level as lawyers and bankers for example whereas in the uk that is not the case my third and final point is that it is hard to settle as a medic now what do i mean by this i mean that when you apply for university at whatever age you are applying to universities all across the country so you are spending five or six years at location a then you graduate you finally become a doctor and you have to do your two foundation doctor years again you have to apply for these and depending on a number of things such as your exam scores throughout medical school and something called your situational judgment test score depends where you end up as a f1 and f2 doctor so again this could be a completely different location in the uk so let's call this location b finally you finish your f1 and f2 years and then you start applying again for your specialty training position so at the moment i really want to do psychiatry so i might apply for psychiatry training programs and i might you guessed it end up and have to go to a completely different area of the country let's call that location c so you can see that in under 10 years i potentially am living in three different places now i'm not saying that it's completely impossible to stay in the same place it will be challenging and you will have to work really hard it's definitely possible but you can never know for certain which does make life more challenging in terms of relationships friendships housing it can be a little unnerving at times and feel a little bit uncomfortable just not knowing where you're going to end up even if you are lucky enough to stay in the same place for some people this actually might be a good thing you might think oh great i get to live in three different places whereas for somebody like my partner who is a lawyer most of the good law jobs are in london so he is always going to be pretty much in london if he wants to earn the top salary in his profession and if he wants to have the best possible chances at developing in his career so again i just want to highlight that i'm not trying to put you off studying medicine i think it's a fantastic career i just think that you should be aware of these three things amongst other things when you apply to study medicine and actually at interviews they will often ask you what are the downsides of studying medicine so having not only an awareness of these downsides but also insight into why you are still suited to that profession and why that doesn't bother you or how you are going to cope with that is how you get those a star marks interview so i hope that was useful i hope that was insightful please give it a like if you found it useful and i will see you all next time on my channel

Channel: Dr Tash Binnie

Views: 13,571

Keywords: why you should not study medicine, should i become a doctor, pros and cons of being a doctor, should i go to medical school, dont become a doctor, should i become a doctor or not, should i go into medicine, how to become a doctor, how i got into medical school, med school insiders, is it worth becoming a doctor, dont become a doctor if this is you, postgraduate medicine, life of a doctor, medical student, med school, med student, medical school

Id: fWsRoEakYtc

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022