Sitting here tonight helping my beloved with his MRCP revision (when I say 'helping', what I mean is helping him mark his answers at the end of each section). MRCP is one of the post qualification exams that doctors have to take and pass in order to climb the slippery ladder of medicine (the very same exam which may be abolished in a few years' time because it doesn't really fit in with MMC don't you know), the exam which costs £300 per shot and has something like a 70% fail rate.Did mock interviews yesterday at a grammar school in North East London - eight eager little would-be medics all lovely, keen and enthusiastic. I find it very hard not to disabuse them of their idealistic, happy ideas about what working in the NHS may mean for them. It's not even about the 'downsides of being a doctor' these days (awareness of which we are keen to assess in applicants) - it's all about the downsides of working in the NHS. The chances of a 17 year old knowing what this really means are nil - and why should they? And yet sitting here with the other half, watching him - after 9 years of training - go through an expensive, presently pointless hurdle for a career which currently promises him a future that is definite only in the following attributes: uncertainty of career structure, potential unemployment, years of geographical relocation, a dwindling amount of respect, successively eroded autonomy in treatment of patients, a possible conclusion as a 'junior consultant' still having to do week long night shifts - well - my heart is not really in it when I interview these poor oblivious applicants. They still think they can make a difference as a doctor. I'm increasingly unsure that they will be allowed to do so.
1 comment:
A slightly depressing but very real post!
Membership exams can sap your soul. And you're quite right that they mean very little now the power to decide when a doctor is trained has been handed to the PMETB. Still, once the exams are out of the way it's a box ticked, a hoop jumped-through.
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