Work Experience

Work experience is an essential part to the medicine application process for many reasons. It can help you to decide whether medicine is a suitable course for you, do you enjoy it? As well as helping you to build new skills, and meet new people. Often it is how you reflect on your experiences, and what you learnt from them that is important and not how many things you have done. You should not treat it as a tick box agenda. Quality and not quantity.

There are many ways for you to do work experience, and some are less obvious than others. Here are a few ideas local to our area:

• Volunteer at St Richards Hospital: you can apply through the NHS website to get an interview, where the coordinator will match you with the best suited department for you. I volunteered on the emergency floor 1 afternoon a week. I got to see how the multidisciplinary team worked together, and it gave me a real insight in to how a hospital runs. After 6 months you receive a certificate as proof of volunteering. You can also apply for separate short-term work experience placements at the hospital.

• Volunteer at St Wilfrids hospice, or apply for their summer school: I gained invaluable knowledge about palliative care through the summer school, as well as gaining some qualifications. It is very local to us, and it is a really niche area of medicine that has lots to learn about. It really allowed me to build on my empathy skills, something that is priceless as a doctor to allow you to relate to patients.

• Volunteer for St John ambulance as a cadet: An amazing charity that allows you to get first-hand experience giving first aid to the public. It really is a great way to build interpersonal skills with patients, and you get to treat a wide variety of people, as well as gain first aid qualifications. As a result, it really helps you to test your suitability, if you enjoy volunteering, you are on the right lines with medicine.

• Write to local GP surgeries to see if you can have some work experience: Often you cannot do it at your own GP surgery due to patient confidentiality, however, this does not stop you from writing to local GP’s to see if they would have you. Many are very open to having future medics in!

• Volunteer or get a part time job in a local care home: As we are living in an ageing population, this is a very important sector- and perhaps even the future of healthcare. I think there are so many things that we can learn from the older generation.

• Get involved in programmes with medical schools: Sussex university runs Brightmed, this is a fantastic course that can give people an insight in to life as a medical student. You must meet certain criteria to be eligible for the scheme, but if you do, it can be well worth it, and if you get involved in it you may even be entitled to reduced offers and extra consideration in your application for certain medical schools. Southampton university also run courses over school holidays offering a similar thing in terms of experience.

• Get involved with local charities: I volunteered as a brownie leader for girl guiding. This gave me the opportunity to work with young children, something that will be required of you as a doctor. It taught me how to adapt my communication style, and to have a more flexible approach, as well as initiative when it came to planning activities, all skills that you will need as a doctor.

In the current climate, medical schools appreciate that you may not be able to get in person work experience, as a result, there are a few other things that you can do to build your knowledge of the subject area:

1. Online work experience: BSMS virtual work experience- https://bsmsoutreach.thinkific.com/courses/VWE which will provide you with a certificate upon completion

2. Observe GP- https://www.rcgp.org.uk/training-exams/discover-general-practice/observe-gp.aspx. Gives you a logbook to reflect. - I think even with in person experience, virtual work experience is a great way to supplement it, and make your learning more formal.

You could also read: here are a few suggestions, but this list is by no means endless:

• This is going to hurt

• The language of kindness, a nurses story

• Being mortal

• Immune (a book which will extend your knowledge of the immune system beyond the A-level specification- this would also be fantastic to include as additional information in an A-level biology essay)

• The knifes edge

• When breath becomes air

• The selfish gene

• Do no harm

• Life lessons from a brain surgeon

• Bad science

You can also do MOOCs online, these are massive open online courses. A popular site is called futurelearn. There are many different subjects to choose from, and many within medicine, the open university also provide short courses for free which you can get certificates from. You could also do an EPQ. As well as choosing a sub speciality to focus on, they also help you to improve skills that will be important at university, such as referencing and dissertation writing. You must also do a presentation at the end which helps with communication and public speaking.