Work Experience Part 1

My journey to graduate entry medicine, like all prospective medical students, started with work experience. This is a requirement from the medical schools because they want to know that people actually know what they are getting into before they apply. I thought this was a good idea before I applied and think its absolutely essential having started medical school.

We have had a (small) number of students already drop out of the course because they have decided medicine is just not for them. Some of these people have had other unforeseen problems going on in their life and there are others who just haven’t enjoyed their hospital placements and decided to leave because of this. I think its probably the best thing for them to leave to find what they really enjoy; they really shouldn’t get into a career they dislike for the the rest of their lives. I feel slightly sorry for those people who were unlucky not to get a place and would have really enjoyed the whole experience and made excellent doctors. Anyway, it is for this reason that medical schools really try to get students to understand and experience what they are getting themselves into, because sometimes, at medical school, what I feel like I have gotten myself into, is Mordor.

Warwick Medical School now have criteria that their applicants now have a minimum number of hours of medically related work experience completed before they have an interview. To get a good flavour of what medicine was really like I wanted to experience both general practice and hospital based medicine. To this end I sent about 15 generic letters to various GP practices near to where I live.

I was contacted by one local village GP practice near to where I grew up. The practice manager contacted me asking if I could come in a few days later, to meet them, so we could have a chat. I probably didn’t make the greatest of first impressions due to the fact that I had quite a large cut above my eyebrow from where my mums very lovely puppy had bitten me by accident, while we were playing that morning. This probably would have been OK except when I’m nervous a Chandler Bing version of me comes out and I try (emphasis on the try) to make jokes.

“You think this is bad, you should see the other guy!”

“Hahaha I am sooo funny”. I must have thought.

“Oh My God! Who is this guy”. They must have thought.

To make this slightly worse, during my interview I rubbed the cut which started bleeding into my eye, meaning the practice nurse had to plaster me up again. I must have looked like Terry Butcher by the end of my interview. What an impression I must have made. 

Thankfully (miraculously?) they offered me as much experience as I wanted in their dispensary handing out medications prescribes by their GPs.