Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Maths-related Medical Careers

Hi there

I was wondering whether there are any maths-related medicine careers?
I've tried googling it, but medical statistician is the only thing that came up - just wondered if there are any others?

I'm a year 12 student, passionate about both maths and medicine; I want to go to uni to study medicine. However, I have been involved with various maths stuff recently - I was wondering whether there would be some point in life I would be able to connect the two together?

Also, how important would you say maths is in studying medicine?

Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

Helenia

You can get away with doing very little maths if you pick your course and then career carefully. Most of what you will do is statistics. Public health, depending on how you approach it, could potentially be quite mathsy but tbh I'm not sure there's that much overlap between the two subjects.

Reply 2

Renal

Surely you mean medical related maths careers? :shifty:

Reply 3

motherewok10

Haha, I guess that too :smile:

I want to focus more on the medicine bit though :smile:

Reply 4

Renal

If you really want to do medicine, do medicine. You will get more exposure to, more experience of and more knowledge about the various career options whilst doing it. You can then decide if you want to leave clinical medicine to do something with maths. If you don't really want to do medicine, do something else.

Medicine doesn't involve a lot of maths routinely, it involves being good with figures and being able to do simple calculations quickly but very little of the maths past GCSE level. There are some specialities where a reasonable grasp of statistics would come in handy, public health and some research fields spring to mind otherwise you need little more than the basics to understand evidence.

Reply 5

motherewok10

Thanks

Medicine is what I really want to do, so I'm definitely going for that :smile:

I guess there really is no place that could contain both maths and medicine....

Reply 6

gozatron

Original post by motherewok10

Thanks

Medicine is what I really want to do, so I'm definitely going for that :smile:

I guess there really is no place that could contain both maths and medicine....

Maybe medical physics?

Reply 7

motherewok10

Ohhh good point...

Although, I'm planning on dropping physics after AS-level... wouldn't I need a whole a-level for that?

Reply 8

Renal

Original post by gozatron

Maybe medical physics?

Are there any doctors (excluding radiologists) who specialise in medical physics?

Reply 9

Helenia

Original post by Renal

Are there any doctors (excluding radiologists) who specialise in medical physics?

Whichever of the oncologies (clinical?) does radiotherapy does quite a bit, I think.

Reply 10

Renal

Original post by Helenia

Whichever of the oncologies (clinical?) does radiotherapy does quite a bit, I think.

Yer, clin.

Reply 11

gozatron

Original post by Renal

Are there any doctors (excluding radiologists) who specialise in medical physics?

It's a sound option if the OP wants to intercalate. I would say medical physics or something such as bioengineering at UCL/Edinburgh would allow OP to head down the medical route and have a bit of mathematics alongside it. I'm sure there must be a few research posts that study medical physics.