Nursing with a view to medicine

I didn't say it was easy. Obviously it's a disadvantage, but the fact remains that not all successful GEP applicants have stellar academics. Competition at GEP is about more than having a million A*.




Top 20% is not remotely unusual for a cutoff and is the same as a lot of UKCAT unis.




It's really not. Doing well in one allegedly "difficult" exam that covers material around A2 level does not remotely compare to serious sustained degree level study over a number of years.

The personality you portray on here is unsavoury at best is all im saying and yes i did study nursing so i know what im talking about.

That is not what I have been told.. I have my nursing degree, and SAAS informed me I will not get the NHS bursary in my last years! But if I went to do midwifery, I would get covered!

*NO COMMENT*

Aaah I see. So what happened? You say you work in a cafe or something now....... Did you quit the course or get the degree but can't find any nursing work in Bristol?

I am only feeling a bit curious (and overusing the smiley)




Oh I see. But you definitely can get the bursary to change between Nursing and Medicine. I researched it and this has been confirmed from a few sources.

Well I must be missing something, because I'm not getting the bursary for my medicine degree, the reason given to me is because I got NHS bursary for my nursing degree!!

Short answer: No


Long answer:

1- Places for nursing are competitive, when I started they oversuscribed the course knowing that 20% will drop out in the first year due to the high attrition rate. 2 cohorts below me now- they've scrapped that and at a selection day in march there were 5 applicants fighting for one place post-interview. Whether you actually want to be a nurse does come through and if your heart isn't in it from the start..it'll come through. If you're lucky enough to get a place- I wouldn't want to know i'd stolen a place from someone who actually wanted to do nursing.

2. The placements will kill you if you don't want to do it. It's all exciting in 1st-2nd year as it's new environment...come 3rd year and you're dealing with ward politics, responsibility and management unless you actually want to spend the next 45 years of your career in it, you'll bail quickly. I've seen many do so and I've had to turn down seeing autopsy's, surgeries, resus calls..all 'interesting' things I could go and do in 1st year. I've not been able to do this year due to having to experience managing my bay. You're still meant to be supernumery in 3rd year, but in reality if you want to survive as a staff nurse..you better start acting like one towards the end. The novelty wears off very quickly.

3. To even consider GEM you need to pass the Gamsat anyway...

4. The placement hours are hard, you get little social life whilst on placement in the first 2 years (had more of a life in 3rd year now i've learnt to balance work/life). I'd much rather do a nice biomed degree with normal university hours...I've not had a holiday in 3 years because during the summer i'm revising for my september exams. I only get 6 weeks off a year- this december I can't wait as I'll be getting 8 weeks off without any exams/revision/hours to make up. Most of my non-nursing friends get double that if not more a YEAR.

5. It's all degree and as much as you MAY get a bursary, the bursary I get is extremely little. It's not nice living off £160 a month, aswell as a student loan- which you'll have to pay back increasing your debt

6. You won't be learning how to be a doctor, you'll be training how to nurse and they are two very seperate disciplines. Why waste 3 years training for a lifetime vocation/career when you're never going to use it? The past year although i've had slots of biology/chem/pharmacology/A&P it's not been as much as the first 18months of the course and has been all about nursing portfolios, law, ethics, management. I've got a whole week next week just on the management of the discharge process in nursing....boring as hell, but seeing as its something I'll be doing a lot in my career it's important. However discharge from a medical perspective is very different.



Seriously save yours and your future mentors & teachers time by not going into nursing and just go for the degree you want to do in the first place.

Could you please not complain about the bursary - it is after all, free money. Medics do placement too - we don't get bursary, and we do three years of placement.

Secondly, I think it is phenomenally stupid to say that nursing skills will not benifit a medical career - nurses are far far better at sutreing, plastering bedside care than doctors. Also, it is nurses who are supposed to nurse and spot sick patients, that will be an invaluable skill. Both professions have to assess sick patients, admittedly medical and nursing assessments are not the same, but sick patients are sick patients, and adding to the pool of experience is a good thing. Besides, all the hype about MDTs, I would think you should welcome such a thing.

Could you please not complain about the bursary - it is after all, free money. Medics do placement too - we don't get bursary, and we do three years of placement.

Secondly, I think it is phenomenally stupid to say that nursing skills will not benifit a medical career - nurses are far far better at sutreing, plastering bedside care than doctors. Also, it is nurses who are supposed to nurse and spot sick patients, that will be an invaluable skill. Both professions have to assess sick patients, admittedly medical and nursing assessments are not the same, but sick patients are sick patients, and adding to the pool of experience is a good thing. Besides, all the hype about MDTs, I would think you should welcome such a thing.

I think they didn't mean to complain about the bursary per se - they were just pointing out that it doesn't make for a good financial argument to this whole nursing --> GEP idea.

On a side note the nursing/medicine bursary discrepancy is being reviewed as part of this NHS bursary review. I expect it will remain the case that nurses are support for 3 years and medics for 1 (on 5 year courses) but at any rate, its apples and oranges financially.

Is it a good idea to study Nursing and become a Nurse, then go to medical school and study G.E.M.

I fully understand that nursing is not just some sort of "Medicine lite"

I like the idea of Nursing for so many G.E.M hopefuls go for biochem and biomed. So I want to avoid the saturation of these subjects. At least in Nursing , I can get some good clinical experience and knowledge. It comes with a good degree of patient interaction and treating people.

This is why I favor Nursing over Biomed or Biochem as well as the financial side of it. After all Nursing Degrees are BSc (Bachelor of Science) degrees. After all Nursing is quite an academic degree too.

Will there be any issues with getting into Grad med and will there be any bias or prejudice etc......


Thanks for your help

Well we don't get a maintenance grant, so it just replaces this source of funding..which is also free. I will complain because I get very little for what i'm doing. If you think about it in terms of hourly wage for whilst on placement, it's £2 an hour. Plus our placements are structured very differently with unsocial hours being compulsary, hence the bursary.

Nurses don't do sutering, plastering so those who are 'far better' are highly skilled nurses with extra studies and courses. Yes we assess sick patients, do OBS, take actions within our remits etc but we assess their nursing care and management needs much more indepth and are different skills needed than a doctor. My admission documentation is much different to the admission/clerking of the house officer as the job is different- if it was so similar wouldn't it make sense that the Nurse or the HO does the clerking?

Nurses take different aspects of all the healthcare professions- we do a bit of physio, OT, salt now and again but that doesn't mean you should do a nursing degree as a way to become a physio.

Well from what I've seen , medical clerkings are more geared towards diagnosis, or at least identifying initial management needs, whereas nursing admissions booklets tend to be more longer term nursing care, and risk management - things like falls waterlow. I think with a bit of practice, medics probably could do it - most of it is set out in such a way that you tick boxes, that isn't meant to be offensive, it just is the way it is. Just as some clincial specialist nurses clerk and manage patients under medical consultant supervision - much like what medical students learn as part of a clerking, and what house officers do. That is not do say that they can take over as HOs - from what I've seen the clincial nurse specialists will take a history, but not really examine - which is a medical skill. As you say, nursing assessments are different, but there is no basic deficit that means medics can't be trained to do nursing assessments and that nurses cannot clerk - it is just that they tend to be mutually exclusively practiced, if nursing students spent their 3 years practicing medical clerkings, they would probably give medical students some decent 'competition'.

I don't really get the point of your post..at all..the only thing I can claw at is that medics can do a nurses job at admission and vis versa (except medics would still do it better...?!). Plus I don't think you know the difference between clinical nurse specialist and a nurse consultant/practitioner, which are very rare and few/far between and mostly taken up with assistant practitioners now anyway.


A lot of an admission can be ticking boxes and for the well patient it seems really boring..and is. However say you get a waterlow score for a patient which shows they're at risk of a pressure sore...then a whole load of action on the nurses part takes place and a whole load of skills take place which are very much solely a nurses skill sometimes. Anyone could do an admission paperwork with a bit of help and fill it in but its understanding what to do with it and forming the care plans, management FROM the admission which is tough.

I don't see how this is relevant to the OP anyway?

No, I think that if medics have to practice and do nursing admissions they could learn to do it, just as nursing students, if they had to learn and do medical clerkings, they could do those too. One of the factors that means they don't is that the courses tend to be mutually exclusive and only teach one skill. Nursing students get taught about all the risk factors in a clerking - they don't admit patients in a medical clerking fashion, and they don't get taught medical examination. That is why I said they can't at present do a HO job. Just as medics can be taught to do a nursing admission booklet, but not manage nursing demands - because they don't spend their placement time learning how to organise their day according to nursing demands. There is no inherent deficit which means nurses can't learn how to do medicy jobs, just as medics could learn to do some nursing jobs.

From what I've seen , the clinical specialists manage and tweak treatments, and the nurse consultants clerk their own patients and manage them.

I think becoming a nurse is quite cool, study at G.E.N =D !

It's best for you to work in France though, because I'm not sure, but is the French fond of their children?

You're right but..stating a major obvious and irrelevance

You would think so, wouldn't you. But having seen how some nursing staff treat new doctors, it isn't actually all that obvious...