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Medicine Interview Tips - Talking about Work Experience

2017-11-08 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Kenny, a guest · recording, 19:09 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Medicine and his doctor years · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Aimed at students

Ali presents tips from eight medical students and mock answers from himself and Kenny on answering "What did you learn on your work experience?" in medicine interviews, then argues that hospital work experience is of doubtful value: choosing medicine from a few days in a hospital is like marrying after a handful of dates, though it remains a checkbox.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ali introduces the video: the correct answer is what is specific to you

  • ★★★ 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 · Medicine interview, Work experience
  • ★ Ali presents tips from eight medical students on answering "What did you learn on your work experience?", mock answers from himself and Kenny, and his own somewhat cynical view of work experience. — 00:01:07 · Medicine interview, Work experience, Kenny
  • ★★ 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 · Work experience
  • ★★ a guest: A medical student talked about work experience at the GP surgery of their father, who is close to many of his patients on the small island in Kent where the family lives: a community feel that showed the student the impact a doctor can have on people. — 00:01:48 · Kent

00:01:51 — Talking about the pros and cons you saw

  • ★★ a guest: The same student advises talking about the pros and cons of medicine seen on work experience, such as doctors working long hours and being tired, and how you would deal with them; the student named their own perfectionism and slowness as something to work on, given the pressure doctors are under. — 00:02:28 · Work experience
  • ★★ a guest: A medical student advises talking less about the clinical things you saw on work experience and more about the doctors' skills and characteristics and how you can build them up in yourself. — 00:02:57 · Work experience
  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience

00:03:15 — Talking about what you learned: transferable skills, teamwork, lessons from a GP

  • ★★ a guest: That student wrote and spoke about an operation they watched, where scrub nurses, theatre technicians and doctors worked cohesively, which taught them the importance of teamwork for patient care. — 00:03:47 · Personal statement
  • ★★ a guest: The student suggests also naming lessons from talking to doctors: a GP told them about financial difficulties, pressure on the system and the ageing population, which they presented as things they had learnt from and were excited to learn more about. — 00:03:47 · Work experience

00:04:28 — Talking about how tough it seemed

  • ★★ a guest: A medical student says the main lesson from their work experience was how tough medicine would be: many doctors tried to dissuade them, which they found useful. — 00:04:31 · Work experience
  • ★★ a guest: The student says applicants should go into medicine knowing it is hard work and not just a glamorous job saving lives and leading a team. — 00:04:31

00:05:16 — Talking about the MDT

  • ★★ a guest: A medical student who felt lost on hospital work experience says you can learn even by observing; they talked about the multidisciplinary team of occupational therapist, physiotherapist, social worker and doctor. — 00:05:19 · Work experience, multidisciplinary team
  • ★★ a guest: A medical student advises reminding interviewers what your work experience involved, since it is not a given that they have read your personal statement. — 00:05:48 · Personal statement

00:05:51 — Talking about doctor-patient relations and the care you saw

  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience

00:06:34 — Talking about volunteering with old and vulnerable people

  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience
  • ★★ a guest: The student says medical schools want applicants to appreciate the patients they will face and how to relate to them, which shines through more than knowing what a cholecystectomy is. — 00:07:03
  • ★★ a guest: A student says volunteering taught them communication with old people and children with learning disabilities, including that discipline for such children must differ and communication style must change with the person. — 00:07:32
  • ★★ a guest: A student advises describing what you did on work experience, what you saw that gave you thoughts or reflections, and how it made you feel. — 00:07:32 · Work experience

00:07:49 — Talking about how it made you feel; Ali introduces the mock answers

00:08:32 — Mock answer 1: Ali

  • ★★ In his mock answer Ali says he did work experience in several hospitals in Pakistan and in the UK, contrasting a developing country's healthcare system with the NHS. — 00:08:35 · NHS
  • ★★ In his mock answer Ali says doctors in both countries felt overworked and underpaid, yet when he asked whether they would still do medicine after winning the lottery, every one said yes, though most would go part-time. — 00:08:59
  • ★★ In his mock answer Ali says that experience showed him that people who do medicine genuinely enjoy their jobs and find them rewarding, his biggest lesson from work experience. — 00:09:23
  • ★★ Kenny says the work experience he learned most from was a year as a healthcare assistant at a local hospital, helping patients with hygiene, toileting and feeding and monitoring vital signs. — 00:09:23 · Kenny

00:09:33 — Mock answer 2: Kenny

  • ★★ Kenny says his 12-hour day and night shifts as a healthcare assistant gave him a sense of doctors' shift patterns and of living your life while working. — 00:10:03 · Kenny
  • ★★ Kenny says working with nurses, doctors, physiotherapists and phlebotomists taught him the other hospital roles and life in a multidisciplinary team, where everyone brings something different but all care is patient-centred. — 00:10:03 · Kenny, multidisciplinary team
  • ★★ Kenny says being in hospital is probably one of the worst times of a patient's life, and his work taught him to see a patient as a person rather than a disease or a task. — 00:10:50 · Kenny

00:11:24 — Ali's thoughts about work experience

  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience

  • ★★★ Ali compares choosing a career in medicine from work experience to deciding to marry someone after just a handful of dates. — 00:12:21 · Work experience

    “it's almost like deciding that you want to marry someone based on spending just a handful of dates with them”

  • ★★ Ali says the Asian and Muslim practice of meeting someone a few times and then committing to marry has value, since a marriage's happiness and stability come from the effort put in rather than pre-existing compatibility. — 00:12:43

  • ★★ Ali highly recommends Alain de Botton's book The Course of Love to anyone interested in what makes a marriage last. — 00:12:43 · Alain de Botton
  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience
  • ★★ Ali says he and the friends he talked to gained little from hospital work experience but a lot from volunteering; he volunteered at a hospice and at a school for special needs students. — 00:13:41 · Work experience
  • ★★ Ali says hospital work experience is treated as the holy grail, with applicants going to hospitals abroad, as he did in Pakistan and Nigeria, for a supposed special insight into a doctor's life, which he thinks unfair. — 00:14:06 · Work experience, Nigeria
  • ★★ Ali says he and his friends had decided on medicine before work experience because they liked science, wanted to help people and it seemed a good, open option. — 00:14:29
  • ★ Ali says six years at university for medicine is much better than three, since university is incredible and those who graduate after three years wish they had stayed longer. (playful) — 00:14:29
  • ★★ Ali says he and his friends did work experience to tick the box in their applications, and none of them found it particularly useful. — 00:14:29 · Work experience
  • ★★ Ali did work experience at a fancy cardiothoracic surgery centre in London: watching heart surgery was cool for about 20 minutes, then for seven and a half hours he had no idea what was going on. — 00:14:56 · London
  • ★★ Ali says on work experience he mostly followed people around, learned little, and most doctors told him not to do medicine because it is a bad career that does not pay much. — 00:15:24
  • ★★ Ali says the only useful thing from work experience is talking to a patient or seeing a good doctor-patient interaction that moves you, and calls that a romanticised story put in personal statements and interviews. — 00:15:49 · Work experience, Personal statement
  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience
  • ★★ Ali says when applying he struggled to find things he had learned on work experience and took it as a sign he maybe should not do medicine, which he now thinks unfair. — 00:16:43 · Work experience
  • ★★★ Ali says the reason to do medicine is not a sudden emotional moment but having thought it through: some 50 years of academic study and long hours, in return for genuinely making a difference in people's lives. — 00:16:43
  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience
  • ★★ Ali says that although he does not think he learned anything from his work experience, he can still give a pretty good answer to the interview question, as his mock answer shows. — 00:17:59

00:18:24 — Closing: work experience is a checkbox; answer in a way specific to you

  • ★★★ 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 · Work experience

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Medicine interview · Work experience

Also: People: Alain de Botton · Kenny

Works: The Course of Love

Organizations: NHS · University of Cambridge

Concepts: multidisciplinary team · Personal statement

Places: Kent · London · Nigeria

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