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Work experience

concept · in 5 sources (2017–2018)

Time spent shadowing or helping in a hospital or GP surgery before applying to medicine, expected of UK medicine applicants.

Sources by year: 2017: 2 · 2018: 3

Also known as: medicine work experience, hospital work experience

Also named in the threads: Ali promises more videos on the BMAT, interviews and personal statements (2017)

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

Personal statement (5) · UKCAT (2) · Medicine interview (2) · University of Cambridge (2)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2018

  • 2018-02-17 · Medicine Application - No offers? — recommendation: Ali advises reapplicants to medicine to go through every part of their application with friends who got in and students in the years above, and ask where the weak points were: personal statement, work experience or interviews. — 00:02:33
    • Marcus advises applicants who did not get into medicine first time not to beat themselves up and, if it is what they really want, to keep going, do work experience and reflect on what they could have done differently. — 00:13:10
  • 2018-05-01 · First Live Hangout + Rapid-fire Q&A — recommendation: Ali: Asked whether medicine applicants should do work experience at a GP surgery or in a hospital, Ali says both. — 00:15:06
    • To get hospital work experience without knowing anyone on the inside, Ali says you have to go through the official routes. — 00:16:01
  • 2018-05-29 · Live Stream - Hangout — recommendation: Ali: For medicine work experience anything helps, Ali says, such as volunteering or shadowing a nurse; for GP experience, just turn up at every GP practice in the area and ask the doctors to let you shadow for a couple of days. — 00:13:04

2017

  • 2017-11-08 · Medicine Interview Tips - Talking about Work Experience — recommendation: Ali says there is no right or wrong answer to "What did you learn on your work experience?": books and videos only give ideas and structure, and the correct answer is what is specific to you. — 00:00:21
    • a guest: A medical student advises being careful not to break confidentiality when talking about work experience, while still describing the different things you saw. — 00:01:48
    • a guest: Another student says what counts is what you learnt from work experience, not how much you did: think about the transferable skills, such as teamwork, that you saw others use and learnt yourself. — 00:02:57
    • a guest: The student advises picking up on doctor-patient relations, teamwork, or examples of care that was or was not effective and why, rather than the coolest surgery: it shows more insight than name-dropping operations. — 00:06:12
    • a guest: A medical student advises not prioritising placements at fancy national or international hospitals over basic work with old and vulnerable people, such as people with learning disabilities. — 00:06:37
    • Ali says work experience has become a really important part of the medicine application, and the idea that it makes you realise medicine is for you has a massive flaw. — 00:11:52
    • Ali compares choosing a career in medicine from work experience to deciding to marry someone after just a handful of dates. — 00:12:21
    • Ali says it is fundamentally unfair to expect a 16- to 18-year-old to commit to a lifelong career in medicine after a few days or weeks in a hospital or GP surgery, which does not show what the life is like. — 00:13:13
    • Ali is sceptical that such life-changing moments on work experience exist: he had none, nor did the five or six people he asked, and he dislikes a culture that expects them. — 00:16:15
    • Ali says volunteering should be part of a medicine application, but he is very sceptical of the value of work experience in a hospital or GP surgery, though open to changing his mind. — 00:17:21
    • Ali says applicants still need a good answer about work experience, because it is a checkbox of the medicine application: you have to do it, and not having done it looks a bit weird. — 00:18:24
  • 2017-11-29 · Medicine Interview Questions - How to answer "Why should we choose you?" — recommendation: a guest: The same student advises showing skills such as teamwork, perseverance and helping others with specific examples, drawn from work experience, extracurriculars or reading, to back up every claim. — 00:05:24
  • …and 12 statements more in 2017 — all statements of 2017