Medicine: Work experience

Introduction

With thousands of applicants competing against one another, work experience is yet another important aspect of your application that can make a BIG difference and help you stand out from the crowd if done well. Work experience isn't just a tick box, it is something you should get involved in out of your own initiative, enthusiasm, and pure interest.

Some find the experience eye-opening to the realities of the profession and it strengthens their desire to study medicine. Some students might realise that medicine is not for them, and it is better to learn this early on so that you can decide on a more suitable career path.

When should you carry out work experience?

It is never too early, but it may sometimes be too late!

How should you carry out work experience?

1) Use your personal contacts.

2) Contact your local hospital, clinic, GP, etc. and ask them if they have any opportunities.

3) Attend medical conferences and seminars. This is where you might meet doctors with whom you can network. Send them your CV if they seem interested in helping you.

4) You could also directly contact a doctor who works in a specialty that appeals to you.

5) Keep knocking and don't give up. If ten people say no, keep going. If 20 people say no, keep going. Someone will eventually say yes.

What counts as work experience?

The different types of work experience are:

* General Practice placements (GP)

* Hospital placements

* Volunteering placements (National/International): Volunteering placements do not necessarily have to be medically related, and any experience in a caring role will be looked at in a favorable light. Wherever you obtain a placement, show consistency by attending over a long period, ideally a few months, as opposed to just doing a few days' work.

* Other placements:

• Charities

• Care homes

You should work with people in three categories:

• Diseased

• Disadvantaged

• Disabled

The biggest mistake made by applicants

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 Several applicants had the opportunity to witness extensive surgeries and innovative patient care, but they couldn't explain what exactly they gained from it.

How to get the most out of your medical work experience

It is crucial that you:

• Make notes about your experiences

• Reflect on them

• Revisit these experiences after a few weeks

The following are a few points to consider when reflecting on your medical work experience:

• What exactly have I experienced today?

• What did the doctor do to manage this?

• How did the patient react to this?

• How did the doctor interact with colleagues, juniors, nurses?

• What may the doctor have done differently?

• How does a doctor learn this skill?

• Why was the action necessary?

• Was this a good example of medicine or a bad example of medicine?

​You can access a reflective statement in the book "The Unofficial Guide to GETTING INTO MEDICAL SCHOOL" (2019), Bogdan Chiva Giurca.

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

What is meant by reflection?

• A definition of reflective thinking:

  • evaluating your first-hand experience of an event, process or activity, then;

  • analysing the reasons for the things that have gone well and less well, then;

  • learning from the experience to improve or refine your performance if a similar situation arises again

• Reflective writing is evidence of reflective thinking in which your personal experience forms a case study or data set for exploration

• Reflective writing is a method for transforming this powerful subjective experience into a form of academic evidence by putting it into a broader context and drawing out its implications 

The Gibbs Reflective Learning Cycle (Gibbs G (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford) is a useful model for structuring a reflective piece of writing. Keep track of your experiences and how they made you feel at the time by using a diary, journal or reflective learning log. Later on, you can use this accumulated experience to identify patterns or make generalisations about your ways of working. This will allow you to compare your experience with the literature and draw conclusions that identify plans for how to tackle similar situations differently in the future, or draw on your experience of what has gone well to gain confidence. 

Virtual work experience

The course below can provide experience to help prepare an application to medicine.

Remember to check other options by clicking on the button below:

Sources:

​The Unofficial Guide to GETTING INTO MEDICAL SCHOOL (2019), Bogdan Chiva Giurca.

www.medschools.ac.uk/ (accessed on 5th November, 2020)