Work Experience

If you are applying to Medical School you will need to have work experience for your application to be considered. You need to do work experience so that you can find out what it is like to be a doctor and work with people and you can talk about what you have learned in an interview and in your UCAS personal statement. Many students make the mistake in thinking that work experience for medicine must include either working with a physician in a hospital or shadowing their local GP but this is not strictly true. This type of work experience is not always available to all of the student who want it. Hospitals are limited in the number of students they can take on work experience and many GPs do not like taking work experience students as they are often worried about confidentiality issues. There is also often an issue with age. Some hospitals and GPs require students to be over 16 before they will take them on. This can be a problem for some school students in Year 11 who may still be 15 when they are offered work experience at school.

Hospital work or shadowing a GP is great experience if you can get it, but if you can't then don't despair, there are many alternatives.

A doctor is a member of a team and working with other members of that team often constitutes excellent work experience. In a hospital you could work with Biomedical Scientists, Medical Physicists or in Rehabilitation to quote a few examples. In a GPs surgery you could work with the practise nurse or in reception. There are also other places you could do work experience. In effect you will need to show you can work with people in a caring environment, so relevant work experience can include volunteer work such as: helping out in an old folks home, working with the disabled, working with childrens groups, working with a volunteer agency such as the Red Cross, Drug Rehabilitation Centres, The Samaritans etc. You willl likely also come into contact with doctors in places like an old folks home or in drug rehabilitation centres.