Making It In Medicine: How To Pursue A Medical Career

A career in medicine can be very rewarding – not only is your work literally saving people’s lives, but you also get paid well for it. Unfortunately, getting into medicine is no easy task. Those wanting to become a fully qualified doctor can expect the journey to take up to ten years. Not only does it take time, but it also takes a lot of hard work. Here are some of the steps that you need to take in order to bag a medical career.

Get the right undergraduate grades

Getting yourself enrolled at medical school will require you to get good grades in school. You may even have to get straight ‘A’s to get accepted. Subjects that will help you earn a place include biology, maths, chemistry and psychology. An alternative route could be to get a degree in one of these subjects that then leads onto a medical degree after.

Earn your medical degree

On top of good grades, you’ll usually need to complete an interview to get accepted into medical school. You then have four to six years to study your medical degree. Expect a lot of intense studying.

Take a residency program

The next step is residency. This involves getting hands-on experience in a hospital or a clinic under the supervision of senior doctors. Residency can take one to two years to complete. Only after this period will you become a qualified doctor. At this point, you may start pursuing medical jobs of your choice. Some doctors stay at the place they had their residency.

Complete specialist training

Many doctors like to specialise, which can result in as much as another three years of training (as is the case with GPs). Specialist training may be something you can do during your residency – for example, if you’ve got your heart set on working in pulmonology, you’ll likely want to experience in a pulmonary unit working with patients that have lung problems.

Make sure medicine is for you

Many people give up on medicine along the way. As rewarding as it is, there’s also a lot of pressure and stress that comes from working long hours and having responsibility over people’s health. Of course, healthcare is such a wide industry and its possible to branch out into other jobs whilst still using your passion for medicine and your knowledge. This could include medical technician work, medical billing, pharmaceutical sales and medical research. You may be only interested in becoming a doctor, but if you do change your mind there are other career paths you can take at any stage.