Skip to content

What We Learnt In 2 Years of Being Doctors - Deep Dive with Molly Hunt

2020-07-13 · Livestream or live hangout · Ali, Molly Hunt · recording, 1 h 37 min · watch on YouTube

Topic: Medicine and his doctor years (also: Learning and studying, Relationships and personal life, Mindset, motivation and happiness, Books and reading, YouTube, writing online and creators, Health, sleep and habits, Productivity and time, Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Answering questions

In a livestreamed Deep Dive, Ali and his housemate Molly Hunt, both finishing their second year as junior doctors, answer viewers on what medicine taught them: specialty choice, mistakes, losing patients, the myth of the medical workload, imposter syndrome and fear of failure, and study and dating advice.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Going live; Molly introduces herself and her food Instagram

  • ★★ In a livestreamed Deep Dive, Ali and his housemate Molly Hunt answer viewers' questions, sent in via Instagram, on the lessons of their two years as doctors. — 00:00:35 · Deep Dive, Molly Hunt, Instagram
  • ★★ Molly Hunt is a junior doctor in the Cambridge region; she met Ali at the same Cambridge college about eight years ago, and they have lived together for two years. — 00:01:42 · Molly Hunt, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: One of Molly Hunt's main hobbies is her food Instagram account, Cambridge Foodie, and she blogs on a website about food and a bit about her life. — 00:02:10 · Molly Hunt, Cambridge, Instagram

00:02:57 — What they wish they had known before starting as doctors

  • ★★ Molly Hunt explains UK medical training: five or six years at university to qualify, then two years of foundation training, F1 and F2, before choosing a specialty. — 00:02:57 · Foundation Programme, Molly Hunt
  • ★★★ Molly Hunt wishes she had known that doctors need not choose a specialty early: they can take time out or try different specialties before deciding what to train in. — 00:04:07 · Foundation Programme, Molly Hunt

00:05:24 — What they would do differently at medical school

  • ★★ If he went back to medical school, Ali would do a little more spaced repetition and active recall, because they knew so much in their first and second years. — 00:05:24 · spaced repetition, active recall
  • ★★ Ali says revisiting old preclinical material with active recall and spaced repetition would have made him a more impressive-looking doctor, though objectively it probably would have changed little. (hedged) — 00:06:26 · active recall, spaced repetition
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: The only thing Molly Hunt would change about medical school is having fewer meltdowns from her intense fear around exams, which eased towards the end of the course. — 00:06:53 · Molly Hunt

00:07:34 — The most hated aspects of the job: annual leave and mistakes

  • ★★ Molly Hunt: What Molly Hunt hates most about being a doctor is the admin, above all how hard it is to plan annual leave in advance. — 00:07:58 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Besides the admin, what Ali dislikes about being a doctor is the feeling of responsibility when he has made a mistake that harmed a patient, even in a minor way. — 00:09:07
  • ★★ Molly Hunt once sent blood tests from a whole clinic in the wrong bottles, because different hospitals use different coloured bottles for different tests. — 00:10:04 · Molly Hunt

00:11:20 — Why Molly is moving out; her wheelchair and wheelchair racing

  • ★★ Molly Hunt is moving out of Ali's house: they planned to live together for two years, and her boyfriend, who lives in Derby, is moving to Cambridge. — 00:11:20 · Cambridge, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt had bone cancer when she was younger, which left her with a hip replacement, nerve damage in her foot and problems with growth in her legs. — 00:11:44 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt took up wheelchair racing, in a separate racing chair, about five years ago. (hedged) — 00:13:00 · Molly Hunt

00:14:16 — Heartwarming patient interactions and sexism at work

  • ★★ Molly Hunt: For a very unwell patient who wanted to get married, Molly Hunt's team arranged a blessing ceremony with his partner present and a vicar on a video call. — 00:14:45 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ On gynaecology, a patient told Ali she had had one sexual partner, her husband, for 35 years; he said he was sorry to hear that, and she burst out laughing. — 00:15:45 · Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★★ Molly Hunt sees small acts of sexism all the time at work, though they have never stopped her: female consultants are mistaken for junior doctors far more often than male ones. — 00:16:14 · Molly Hunt

00:18:10 — Work-life balance, the best bits of being a doctor, people skills

  • ★★★ Ali says the media heavily inflates how hard being a doctor is: he and Molly Hunt work about 45 hours a week on average. — 00:18:10 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali thought the best bit of being a doctor would be heartwarming moments with patients, but it is the banter with his co-workers. — 00:18:59
  • ★★ Molly Hunt likes helping patients feel better, but thinks a good team around you is what you look forward to at work. — 00:20:40 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali feels most fulfilled when he personally goes above and beyond for a patient, since most healing in medicine is done by the system, the team and the guidelines. — 00:21:10
  • ★★ Molly Hunt thinks being a doctor improves your people skills, partly through the communication skills training they had at university. — 00:21:59 · Molly Hunt

00:22:36 — Coping with difficult days at work

  • ★★ Molly Hunt: After a difficult day at work, Molly Hunt offloads to people and talks it through, calling about ten people. — 00:23:00 · Molly Hunt

00:23:45 — The one book for a 24-hour flight; is Ali tidy

  • ★★ Molly Hunt recommends With the End in Mind, a palliative care consultant's memoir, which she recently loved. — 00:24:29 · Palliative care, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ For a 24-hour flight Ali would take The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. — 00:24:55

00:26:22 — Specialty plans, doctors' pay, other jobs

  • ★★ Ali is thinking of specialising in emergency medicine. — 00:26:22
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says a doctor's salary is good, nowhere near her friends' London corporate jobs but above the UK average salary. — 00:26:43 · Molly Hunt, London
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: If she could not be a doctor, Molly Hunt would be a secondary school teacher of biology and chemistry; she used to tutor and liked it. — 00:27:17 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt's dream job would be restaurant critic. — 00:27:17 · Molly Hunt

00:28:15 — Which Anki deck for finals

  • ★★★ For finals Anki decks Ali recommends the USMLE decks, especially AnKing version 7, which suits most medical schools even if you are not taking the USMLE. — 00:28:44 · Anki, USMLE

00:29:12 — Will Molly start a YouTube channel; Ali moving to the US

  • ★★ Molly Hunt does not plan to start a YouTube channel; if she did, it would be about food. — 00:29:12 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali tells Molly Hunt you can do YouTube without going as extreme as he does. — 00:29:39 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt is still not sure Ali will move to the US, but will let him prove her wrong. (hedged) — 00:30:09 · United States, Molly Hunt

00:30:20 — Imposter syndrome, fear of failure, evidence to yourself and diversifying your identity

  • ★★★ Molly Hunt says that as they gained more qualifications, each one became more evidence to her that she is meant to be doing medicine. — 00:31:17 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: In her first year of medical school at Cambridge, Molly Hunt was sure she should not be there, would fail all her exams and had been let in by mistake. — 00:31:38 · Molly Hunt, Cambridge
  • ★★ Molly Hunt has been putting off booking MRCP part 1, her first postgraduate exam, because she hates feeling she is not good enough and will fail. — 00:33:01 · MRCP, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says her terror of failing the MRCP is fear of failure, not imposter syndrome. — 00:33:46 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says people like him or Jake approach exams with borderline arrogance: it is an exam, they will prepare for it, how hard can it be? — 00:34:27 · Jake
  • ★★ Molly Hunt sees two types of people, those aiming not to fail an exam and those aiming to do well, and counts herself among those aiming not to fail. — 00:35:55 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★★ Molly Hunt: To feel more confident Molly Hunt presents evidence to herself: in second year she made a document listing things she had done, to look back on. — 00:37:28 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★★ Molly Hunt advises spreading your identity across several things: if your whole identity is doing well in exams, one bad exam means everything is gone. — 00:38:36 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt broke her arm in July 2019, almost a year before this video. — 00:39:32 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says dividing your identity helps only until all of its parts are wiped out at once. — 00:41:36 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★★ Ali sums up: diversify your identity, though that is easier said than done, and some things will simply floor you whatever you do. — 00:42:02

00:42:28 — Regrets, free time, advice to women in medicine, surgical training, the coffee offer

  • ★★ Molly Hunt advises young women pursuing medicine to have confidence in their abilities, go for it, and ask to be part of opportunities. — 00:43:31 · Molly Hunt
  • ★ Ali says he is still taking finasteride. — 00:43:31
  • ★★ Ali's offer to meet viewers who come to Cambridge for a cup of coffee still stands: it is on his website, and people come over all the time. — 00:45:01 · Cambridge

00:45:15 — Losing patients; Molly's specialty options

  • ★★ Molly Hunt: In Molly Hunt's whole first year as a doctor, not one patient died while she was on shift. — 00:45:31 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt finds deaths that were not planned for or expected much harder to deal with than expected ones, and they can be quite unsettling. — 00:46:59 · Palliative care, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ A patient of Ali's died unexpectedly of a cardiac arrest after unsuccessful resuscitation. — 00:47:28
  • ★★★ Ali treated the unexpected death of a patient as a learning opportunity: you cannot change the past, all you can do is learn from it. — 00:47:59
  • ★★ Molly Hunt is torn between paediatrics, palliative care, general medicine and general practice and still does not know what she wants to do. — 00:48:51 · Palliative care, Molly Hunt

00:49:19 — Keeping blood flowing at a desk: standing and treadmill desks

  • ★★ For someone who sits at a desk all day with varicose veins, Ali recommends a treadmill desk: people he has spoken to say it changed their lives. — 00:49:48

00:50:25 — Breaking the rules at work; Molly's hair and blog

  • ★★★ Ali sometimes breaks rules at work and asks who made them, such as the rule against requesting ultrasound scans after 5pm because the department is closed. — 00:51:21
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says that when a consultant departs from the guidelines, such as for antibiotics, a junior doctor often has to accept that the consultant's call goes. — 00:52:38 · Molly Hunt

00:54:13 — Advice for a 15 or 16-year-old medicine aspirant and work experience

  • ★★★ Ali's advice to a 15 or 16-year-old who wants to study medicine: get really good grades, the main thing that matters. — 00:54:13
  • ★★★ Ali says a week of work experience will not give anyone an idea of what medicine actually involves. — 00:54:13 · Work experience
  • ★★ Molly Hunt advises medicine applicants to get experience that really shows them what medicine involves, such as talking to doctors about their jobs. — 00:55:13 · Work experience, Molly Hunt

00:57:25 — What life as a YouTuber and a doctor looks like

  • ★★ Ali also wastes a lot of time: that morning he spent an hour and a half lying on the sofa scrolling Instagram. — 00:57:32 · Instagram
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says everyone thinks Ali is the most productive person in the world, but she often finds him procrastinating, especially about brushing his teeth. (playful) — 00:57:32 · Molly Hunt

00:58:40 — Is the UK too competitive about medical school places

  • ★★ Ali calls competition for UK medical school places supply and demand: there is a set number of places, and not everyone who applies can be trained. — 00:59:08

01:00:10 — The most important tip not to procrastinate

  • ★★ Molly Hunt's tip for not procrastinating is to have her phone taken away, because she spends hours on it. — 01:00:16 · Molly Hunt

01:01:50 — Their A-levels; improving grades by testing yourself

  • ★★ Molly Hunt took maths, chemistry, biology and German A-levels and got three A stars and an A in German. — 01:01:51 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali took biology, chemistry, physics and maths A-levels and got four A stars, having dropped English literature after AS. — 01:01:51
  • ★★★ Ali tells a 15-year-old scoring 60 to 70% to use active recall and spaced repetition: testing yourself more is the single biggest thing that brings better grades. — 01:02:27 · active recall, spaced repetition

01:03:15 — Proudest moments as doctors; Medic Styles

  • ★★ Ali's proudest moment as a doctor: a few weeks ago a consultant told him their heart always sings when they see he is on call with them. — 01:03:48
  • ★★ Molly Hunt is prouder of doing a 10K wheelchair race than of anything she has done in medicine. (hedged) — 01:04:11 · Molly Hunt

01:06:00 — Getting things together: dating books, family, career

  • ★★ For dating, Ali recommends How to Be a 3% Man, Models by Mark Manson, The Game by Neil Strauss, The Art of Seduction and The Rational Male; The Mystery Method he calls old school. — 01:06:09
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: On career and YouTube Molly Hunt advises doing something you enjoy if you can: it falls into place far more easily than forcing yourself into something you do not enjoy. — 01:06:36 · Molly Hunt

01:07:35 — Unconventional choices; Molly alone on the coffee offer and difficult colleagues

01:09:00 — Molly's study techniques

  • ★★ Molly Hunt does not make her own notes when studying: she reads the notes, tries to remember it all and tests herself as she goes. — 01:09:13 · active recall, Molly Hunt
  • ★★★ Molly Hunt then makes a spider diagram of a topic, such as blood disorders, writing everything she can remember, and fact-checks it against the notes. — 01:09:34 · active recall, Molly Hunt

01:10:18 — An embarrassing story about Ali; where Molly is from

01:11:17 — Getting comfortable on camera

  • ★★ Molly Hunt says that once you start being on camera, you get more used to it. — 01:11:44 · Molly Hunt

01:12:00 — Does Ali think he is better than Molly: problem-solving versus listening

  • ★★ Molly Hunt does not think Ali thinks he is better than her, but he often interrogates how she does things and why she should do them his way. — 01:12:17 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt tells Ali there are multiple ways to function, do well and be happy, and they need not be his way. — 01:13:39 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says he has always been an advocate of people doing whatever they want. — 01:14:09
  • ★★★ Ali says that, more so in the past, he defaulted to problem-solving mode, because he wrongly believed someone complaining about a problem wants it solved. — 01:15:14

01:17:38 — Remembering what you read

  • ★★ Molly Hunt: To remember what she reads, Molly Hunt keeps trying to recall what she read pages earlier and how it links to what she is reading now, the active learning Ali puts a name to. — 01:17:38 · active recall, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: Writing things down does not help Molly Hunt remember and takes her much longer, though some people find it easier. — 01:18:06 · Molly Hunt

01:19:01 — Pet peeves, Ali off camera, Jake and Not Overthinking

01:21:15 — What Cambridge gave them; Medic Styles merch

01:23:50 — Where they see each other in 15 to 30 years

  • ★★ Ali says he no longer wants to go into medical education. — 01:23:56
  • ★★ Ali agrees with Molly Hunt that in 15 to 30 years he will not still be working full-time as a doctor. — 01:23:56 · Molly Hunt

01:24:26 — The medical workload myth; why Molly would not move to America

  • ★★ To someone who wants to do medicine but fears the workload, Ali says just do it: the workload is not too much and you can cope. — 01:24:26
  • ★★ Molly Hunt's default answer to someone afraid of the medical workload would be: if you think it will be too tough, don't do medicine. — 01:24:26 · Molly Hunt

  • ★★★ Ali calls the heavy medical workload a myth spread by medical students and applicants: it is all very doable and no harder than most other degrees. — 01:24:57

    “the whole medical workload thing is an absolute myth”

  • ★★ Molly Hunt would never move to America: she dislikes working as a doctor in a system where people pay for care, and loves the NHS. — 01:25:59 · NHS, United States, Molly Hunt

01:27:06 — Music while studying, preparing for a medical exam, Molly's third year

  • ★★ Ali says no medical exam takes three years to prepare for: a year and a half is a very long time, more than any medical exam needs. — 01:27:33
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: In her third year at Cambridge Molly Hunt studied history and philosophy of science and medicine, which she loved. — 01:28:08 · University of Cambridge, Molly Hunt, Cambridge

01:29:00 — Missing each other, family medical questions, Molly's favourite thing about Ali

  • ★★ Ali told Molly Hunt that her leaving would force him to think harder about the meaning in his life. — 01:29:08 · Molly Hunt
  • ★ Molly Hunt: When her family send Molly Hunt pictures of medical problems, she tells them to see their GP because she cannot give advice. — 01:30:42 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt's favourite thing about Ali is that he always makes time for other people and is there when she needs help. — 01:31:13 · Molly Hunt

01:32:28 — Starting a medical education company like SixMed

  • ★★★ Ali advises against starting a medical education company like SixMed: the market is saturated; only do things where you have an unfair advantage. — 01:32:28 · 6med

01:33:01 — Nurses, Notion, Ali's future wife, a day off, Ali's dream girl

  • ★★ Ali says nurses do not get the credit they deserve: he could not be a nurse himself and thinks they do an amazing job. — 01:33:01
  • ★★ Molly Hunt thinks Ali's dream girl is someone he is impressed by. — 01:35:45 · Molly Hunt

01:36:53 — Sign-off

  • ★★ Molly Hunt is moving out to live about 50 metres away from Ali. — 01:36:53 · Molly Hunt

Humor (significant)

  • Taking a sexual history, a patient tells Ali she has had one partner, her husband, for 35 years. — 00:15:45

    “And I said, oh, I'm sorry to hear that.”

  • Molly praises Ali for tidying the whole house for the livestream. — 00:25:50

    “We also had the cleaner come over earlier this afternoon.”

  • Ali thanks a viewer for a £1.99 Super Chat. — 00:28:44

    “We can use that to buy half a miso soup next time we order sushi.”

  • Molly says the supposedly ultra-productive Ali spends about an hour procrastinating on one task. — 00:57:55

    “building up to brushing his teeth.”

  • Ali defends interrogating why Molly feels as she does about exams. — 01:17:14

    “it reduces the amount of suffering in the world”

  • Asked whether you can start a YouTube channel while doing medicine, Ali, a doctor with a YouTube channel, answers. — 01:26:31

    “no no it's impossible the workload is so hard and it's impossible to do anything else”

  • Molly says Ali told her he would miss her. — 01:29:08

    “Specifically, I said I was feeling sad that you're leaving, which is not the same categorically as missing you.”

  • Asked what she would tell Ali's future wife after living with him for two years, Molly gives advice. — 01:33:01

    “Make sure you've got a hobby.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: diversifying your identity · Molly Hunt

Also: People: David Dobrik · Jake · Mark Manson · Neil Strauss · Patrick Rothfuss · Robert Greene · Rollo Tomassi

Projects: Not Overthinking

Works: How to Be a 3% Man · Models · MRCP · The Art of Seduction · The Game · The Mystery Method · The Name of the Wind · The Rational Male · USMLE · With the End in Mind

Organizations: 6med · Instagram · NHS · University of Cambridge

Concepts: active recall · Emergency medicine · Foundation Programme · General internal medicine · General practice · how hard can it be? · Obstetrics and gynaecology · Paediatrics · Palliative care · privilege · spaced repetition · spider diagram · unfair advantage · Work experience

Places: Cambridge · Harpenden · London · United States

Products: Anki · AnKing · Finasteride · Forest · iPhone 11

Only in the description or credits: Cambridge Foodie · Deep Dive

← Previous: One Simple Habit that Changed My Life · Next → Is Success Luck or Hard Work?