A Doctor's Life. Part 1: Early career training.

If you are attempting the UCAT Exam this year, there is a fair chance you know you want to become a doctor (yes, I know, hardly going out on a limb here). You may even have had exposure to a specific field of medicine and already have a specialty in mind. Like many prospective students who understand the importance of planning ahead in this very competitive study path, you also probably have researched the best strategies to ace your UMAT® Exam and increase your chances of admission in your University of choice. Some of you would also have looked up what to expect once in University and how best to handle the workload as a medical student.

Unfortunately, the one area for which prospective doctors seem to be woefully unprepared is what comes after that happy graduation day. Getting into medicine and actually making it through these 5 to 6 years may seem like enough of a challenge for most people and few have the foresight to look beyond that point. Big mistake. Let me explain: most new graduates have to go through a fair bit of on-the-job-training when they first start work, however medicine differs from other professions in the sense that at graduation level, you are really only just beginning your training. Here are a few facts you need to be aware of (and start planning for) about what comes after graduation:
 

How long will it take me to complete my training?

That depends on your specialty. When starting your career as an intern, you will be in the unique position of being both a doctor and a student. While your role attending to patients as a doctor (under various levels of supervision) starts pretty much from day 1, it will be years before your training is actually completed. For most medical specialties, it takes a minimum of 8 years of additional training to progress from lowly intern to full-fledged specialist, otherwise known as consultant. This is the absolute minimum length of training for very driven and gifted student, however a more realistic time frame for a medical specialty like Anaesthesiology for instance, is 10 to 12 years. For General Surgery, the absolute minimum training time would be 8 years, with a more average length of 11 to 13 years. For a specialty like radiology, a bare minimum of 7 is required, though most achieve it within 8 to 9 years. Finally, GPs usually complete their training within 4 years.

The training takes the form of an apprenticeship and a large proportion of it takes place in the (mostly public) hospital environment. It may not come as a huge surprise to you that this training is very competitive- it is medicine after all- but you may be surprised to find out just how competitive… Yup, that’s right, med school was really just a walk in the park, now the real fun begins…
 

What are the actual steps to becoming a consultant?

Fresh out of medical school, you will first start for a year as an intern, following which you will become a resident, otherwise known as hospital medical officer (HMO) for one to 2 years, depending on the requirements of your specialty of interest. At this point, you may apply for a specialty and provided you are accepted into the appropriate training college, start as a junior registrar within that specialty. In your first or second year as a registrar, you will be expected to take your primary or entrance exams, which consist of a written and oral section in 4 separate subjects. Once you pass, you can apply for a job within a training program. Upon acceptance into a training program, you will become a senior registrar. After a few more years of training as a registrar, you can finally take your consultant exam (or exit) exam, which completes your training. In addition to the entrance and exit exams, some specialties have additional exams in the course of the training program. The pass rate for the written section of the primaries varies between 40 to 70 %, depending on the specialty, and the consultant exams are even more competitive. Many must therefore attempt their primaries and consultant exams multiple times.
 

For more info on the early career stages, stay tuned for the upcoming part 2 of our post-graduation series, “Specialty training: major hurdles explained”.