Many of you have been telling me about how hard it is to find good medicine work experience at the moment.
It can be really hard during this time, but please don’t panic! You aren’t the only one.
With that in mind, if you can be just a bit more inventive, creative and resilient than the next applying medic… You have already won an incredible advantage!
Only a few monnths ago, I was in your same position!
I am going to share with you 15 tips that I used to get the medicine work experience I needed.
This is part II so if you haven’t read the first 7 amazing tips, you can do that here!
How to get work experience for medicine:
8. Read the news
There are so many new stories in the news that you could read to reflect on how doctors are coping during this time, how they can do better and what you think they are doing well!
BBC is your best friend when it comes to this. I touched on this in my wider reading post
9. Get watching!
There are some brilliant channels on youtube, especially who talk about life as a doctor and take you around on their day!
Violin MD is one of my favourites, but try to find some UK based channels too. (Making a comparison between healthcare systems will get you top reflective points.)
10. Work experience for medicine: Books!
There are some brilliant books out there to get insight!
Have a look at my wider reading post to see more on this! I go into extensive detail about all the different things you can be reading to gain insight!
11. Write about the times that you have failed… ( Yes I am serious.)
The more time you fail and try again, the more resilient you are.
Keep a diary of all the times you failed to get work experience, why you think you failed and how you are going to do better next time!
This shows that you are adaptive and have the ability to criticize and evaluate your efforts to get better at things!
This is seriously high-level thinking.
12. Work experience for medicine: Use your contacts!
You might think you don’t have any, but you do!
Keep being persistent and digging around your social circles, your family and social media accounts until you find someone who is up for talking with you!
Be careful not to have a closed mind.
Have you asked at school?
At sports training?
Your friends?
People you know in other healthcare professions?
Have you asked your GP or doctor?
These are all great places to start. They may not all say yes, but they might give you another contact to follow up!
If you are persistent you will 100% find someone.
13. Be prepared and professional.
When asking for work experience you should have a CV and a recommendation to hand.
The more prepared you are, the more that you will stand out and people will be more willing to talk to you.
Be professional right from the start and this is a skill you can reflect on in your personal statement.
14. Don’t stress!
This is an incredibly difficult time and everyone is in the same boat! Try your best, be creative and keep a log of every move you make.
This is what the point of work experience is, for learning. You can decide what you are going to learn from, it could be the smallest of things!
15. Be creative.
Medical work experience is not about getting to go to a hospital and observe a surgeon.
It is about what you can learn from experience. It doesn’t have to be in an extremely clinical environment. Universities will know that this isn’t possible for you right now!
What they will be looking to see is who has taken this in their stride and found the next best thing and who has thrown in the towel!
Wrapping up.
I hope this has been useful for you and you have taken note of some things you can get doing!
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See you next time!