Question I often get asked: would you push your children down the route to become a doctor?
Answer before graduating medical school: yes if they expressed interest in medicine, I would encourage it.
Answer now: Not unless medicine was the only thing they want to do (like me) but I would encourage them to look at other career pathways and think about the quality of life they might be signing up for. I would tell my child (and indeed any other child that asks) that there are plenty of ways of helping people, not just medicine. I would say that unless they have spoken to many doctors, read blogs/articles written by a wide variety of doctors and done a good period of shadowing of a full time NHS junior doctor, maybe consider something like law or better yet engineering if they want a profession or even become a journalist, photographer or best of all a human rights activist. Other healthcare roles are available and evolving with incentives and support to train in those pathways. A physician’s assistant is better off than the physician, not just in terms if salary but expectations and quality of life. Nurse Practitioners (specialist or advanced) certainly have a better work life balance and earn more for their hours.
Maybe in the 20th century, doctors’ pay and the respect they got compensated for the gruelling backbreaking hours of hard work and sweat and not getting to see daylight for days on end. But not now. Not in NHS England anyway. I dread to think what the state of affairs will be in 2022 when a baby being born today would be making that career decision :|
P.S my answer in short: No. Save yourself the heartache. Do something else.
