The Student Room Group

medicine work experience- GP or Care home?

Hello everyone, I am thinking of doing medicine at uni and I have to write my application by October I haven't got much work experience - I only did pharmacy work experience and in a oxford chemistry lab for 1 week, I am desperately looking for some more work experiences, currently I have two options in my hand- GP or care home, my friend told me GP is more important than care home as I could learn more about the profession itself, however, I dont feel i have the self confidence to sit next to a GP and ask questions etc...so please please someone advice me on this.
Also can anyone tell me how can I arrange a work experience in a hospital.
Original post by Hard work
Hello everyone, I am thinking of doing medicine at uni and I have to write my application by October I haven't got much work experience - I only did pharmacy work experience and in a oxford chemistry lab for 1 week, I am desperately looking for some more work experiences, currently I have two options in my hand- GP or care home, my friend told me GP is more important than care home as I could learn more about the profession itself, however, I dont feel i have the self confidence to sit next to a GP and ask questions etc...so please please someone advice me on this.
Also can anyone tell me how can I arrange a work experience in a hospital.



make a cv and chuck it out to all your local: hospitals, care homes, chemists etc.... and they will get back to you thats how i do it (;
GP is better for work experience but do care home volunteering alongside :smile:
Hospitals may have a work experience program available on their website - if not, call them up.
Original post by Hard work
Hello everyone, I am thinking of doing medicine at uni and I have to write my application by October I haven't got much work experience - I only did pharmacy work experience and in a oxford chemistry lab for 1 week, I am desperately looking for some more work experiences, currently I have two options in my hand- GP or care home, my friend told me GP is more important than care home as I could learn more about the profession itself, however, I dont feel i have the self confidence to sit next to a GP and ask questions etc...so please please someone advice me on this.
Also can anyone tell me how can I arrange a work experience in a hospital.


Also, how did you get that experience if you don't mind me asking? Sounds amazing! :smile:
Reply 4
Original post by malaikaxx
make a cv and chuck it out to all your local: hospitals, care homes, chemists etc.... and they will get back to you thats how i do it (;


Trust me I really tried all that............calling them up. They dont get back
You may or may not want to research this further; but I'm doing mental health nursing at uni in September and I've done months and months of volunteering at one of my local hospitals on the ward experience. It's under the Royal Voluntary Service and you do shifts on a ward with older patients, it's not ideal to do it with older patients but you can do the volunteering as many times as you want, even at more than one hospital. I do 2 hours at 2 hospitals each week and it's amazing experience and it's the reason why I've got my uni offers.

You do things such as:
-befriends patients
-encourage them to eat, drink, move around if suitable
-take them to appointments if they're mobile within the hospital
And more.

It's up to you if you want to research it further but you can have a look at that if you want.. good luck. (Just Google it if you want to)

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(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Hard work
however, I dont feel i have the self confidence to sit next to a GP and ask questions etc.


What do you think medical school is going to involve?
Reply 7
Original post by surina16
GP is better for work experience but do care home volunteering alongside :smile:
Hospitals may have a work experience program available on their website - if not, call them up.


I dont know how to build self confidence also, i am only doing my a levels so I dont know if i am gonna look really dumb in a hospital but i want to overcome my fears howver before entring hospital I need to be a perfectionist dont you think?
Reply 8
Original post by CaitlinN15
You may or may not want to research this further; but I'm doing mental health nursing at uni in September and I've done months and months of volunteering at one of my local hospitals on the ward experience. It's under the Royal Voluntary Service and you do shifts on a ward with older patients, it's not ideal to do it with older patients but you can do the volunteering as many times as you want, even at more than one hospital. I do 2 hours at 2 hospitals each week and it's amazing experience and it's the reason why I've got my uni offers.

You do things such as:
-befriends patients
-encourage them to eat, drink, move around if suitable
-take them to appointments if they're mobile within the hospital
And more.

It's up to you if you want to research it further but you can have a look at that if you want.. good luck. (Just Google it if you want to)

Posted from TSR Mobile


OMG thanks so much but what should I google?
Original post by Hard work
Hello everyone, I am thinking of doing medicine at uni and I have to write my application by October I haven't got much work experience - I only did pharmacy work experience and in a oxford chemistry lab for 1 week, I am desperately looking for some more work experiences, currently I have two options in my hand- GP or care home, my friend told me GP is more important than care home as I could learn more about the profession itself, however, I dont feel i have the self confidence to sit next to a GP and ask questions etc...so please please someone advice me on this.
Also can anyone tell me how can I arrange a work experience in a hospital.


No one will expect (or allow) you to ask the patients questions. When they're not busy, you should ask the GP any questions you might have because that's how you'll get a better understanding of what being a doctor is like...which is basically the point of doing work experience, wouldn't you agree?

Care home is good for volunteering - but unless you want to be a nurse or a carer, it shouldn't be seen as work experience.

As for arranging work experience in a hospital - check on hospital websites, there's often a work experience co-ordinator or similar you can get in touch with. Failing that, start sending emails to consultants' secretaries. It's not easy to arrange work experience so you might find you'll get a lot of rejections before someone says yes; the key is to keep at it.
Original post by Hard work
I dont know how to build self confidence also, i am only doing my a levels so I dont know if i am gonna look really dumb in a hospital but i want to overcome my fears howver before entring hospital I need to be a perfectionist dont you think?


Not at all! The consultants/whoever you do work experience with will not expect you to know all the medical terms etc. - that's what the 5 or 6 years at uni are for :smile:

I think volunteering at the care home would really be good to build your self confidence since you really develop your communication skills whilst you're there. If you don't want to jump straight in, maybe volunteer at a charity shop instead as the environment is less demanding.

It's really important to develop these skills since they are vital for being a doctor.
Reply 11
Original post by surina16
Also, how did you get that experience if you don't mind me asking? Sounds amazing! :smile:


I just searched and there was this website which says u can apply for it the link is http://outreach.chem.ox.ac.uk/work-exp-1.aspx so if you wanna check out
Reply 12
Original post by surina16
Not at all! The consultants/whoever you do work experience with will not expect you to know all the medical terms etc. - that's what the 5 or 6 years at uni are for :smile:

I think volunteering at the care home would really be good to build your self confidence since you really develop your communication skills whilst you're there. If you don't want to jump straight in, maybe volunteer at a charity shop instead as the environment is less demanding.

It's really important to develop these skills since they are vital for being a doctor.


I dont know why I just have really low self confidence....but My passion and eveything is to become a good doctor and I will do eveything for it.
Reply 13
Original post by Democracy
No one will expect (or allow) you to ask the patients questions. When they're not busy, you should ask the GP any questions you might have because that's how you'll get a better understanding of what being a doctor is like...which is basically the point of doing work experience, wouldn't you agree?

Care home is good for volunteering - but unless you want to be a nurse or a carer, it shouldn't be seen as work experience.

As for arranging work experience in a hospital - check on hospital websites, there's often a work experience co-ordinator or similar you can get in touch with. Failing that, start sending emails to consultants' secretaries. It's not easy to arrange work experience so you might find you'll get a lot of rejections before someone says yes; the key is to keep at it.


Thanks so much
Original post by Hard work
OMG thanks so much but what should I google?


The royal voluntary service. And you're welcome :smile: it's an amazing expericence to have, you meet amazing people.

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Reply 15
For sure do both if you can! I think you would learn more at the GPs surgery than the care home, at the latter you could end up just talking to patients and making tea. I get what you mean though that it would be a bit intimidating
just talking to a GP, I got to shadow a junior doc or in a hospital for a day and I just felt so out of place when they were discussing treatment with patients etc. I got to do that shadowing because I did a student volunteering programme at my local hospital, to find it I literally just googled 'Lister hospital (my nearest hospital' volunteering' and it took me to the NHS websit. The student programme last for 15 weeks but there was one girl on a gap year who did it for 6 months. We were given the option to either shadow a consultant for a day or get the email of a junior doctor, I chose the latter and she was really lovely, asked me straight away when I wanted to come in! Although the normal volunteering wasn't as interesting, that was just talking to patients and making cups of tea. Its definitely worth doing the less interesting stuff as it can lead to cool things, like when I shadowed the junior doctor I got to see some surgery (gall bladder removal)! So either do both or go to as hospital as it can be a nice balance between the two in terms of boring vs interesting stuff!
Original post by Hard work
Hello everyone, I am thinking of doing medicine at uni and I have to write my application by October I haven't got much work experience - I only did pharmacy work experience and in a oxford chemistry lab for 1 week, I am desperately looking for some more work experiences, currently I have two options in my hand- GP or care home, my friend told me GP is more important than care home as I could learn more about the profession itself, however, I dont feel i have the self confidence to sit next to a GP and ask questions etc...so please please someone advice me on this.
Also can anyone tell me how can I arrange a work experience in a hospital.


Volunteering in a care home is so much more important. As long as it becomes a recurrent thing and you show commitment to it. As you can't do a lot in the GP you will gain a lot more experience in the care home which you can reflect on in your PS.
Medical schools realise it's hard to get work experience in health care settings so it isn't a necessity but you HAVE to have as much voluntary work as possible.
Get organising!!!
I am more than happy to ask any more questions regarding medical school applications :smile:
Reply 17
Original post by EllieO
For sure do both if you can! I think you would learn more at the GPs surgery than the care home, at the latter you could end up just talking to patients and making tea. I get what you mean though that it would be a bit intimidating
just talking to a GP, I got to shadow a junior doc or in a hospital for a day and I just felt so out of place when they were discussing treatment with patients etc. I got to do that shadowing because I did a student volunteering programme at my local hospital, to find it I literally just googled 'Lister hospital (my nearest hospital' volunteering' and it took me to the NHS websit. The student programme last for 15 weeks but there was one girl on a gap year who did it for 6 months. We were given the option to either shadow a consultant for a day or get the email of a junior doctor, I chose the latter and she was really lovely, asked me straight away when I wanted to come in! Although the normal volunteering wasn't as interesting, that was just talking to patients and making cups of tea. Its definitely worth doing the less interesting stuff as it can lead to cool things, like when I shadowed the junior doctor I got to see some surgery (gall bladder removal)! So either do both or go to as hospital as it can be a nice balance between the two in terms of boring vs interesting stuff!


OMG thats sooooooooooo cool...... thats amazing seriously!!! when you were doing it were you on ur gap year or doing A levels? How did u get the offer? Did you have an amzing PS and really good grades? also if you can could you send me the web link plz....
Reply 18
Original post by Hard work
OMG thats sooooooooooo cool...... thats amazing seriously!!! when you were doing it were you on ur gap year or doing A levels? How did u get the offer? Did you have an amzing PS and really good grades? also if you can could you send me the web link plz....


I did it at the beginning of year 13 (I should've done it earlier really), it was one 3 hour shift a week so it didn't interfere with school work too much or anything. They didn't ask for grades or anything like that, you just had to submit 200 about why you wanted to do it. (You had to email it at 7am and I think they just chose the first 12, so you have to send it at 7:00 on the dot!) Unfortunately, my AS grades were sort of crap so I changed from Medicine to Biomedical Science. I wrote about it in my personal statement but because I didn't have an interviews I don't know how much they appreciated it - I did get all 5 offers though!
Here's the link for the one they did at my nearest hospital, I don't know if this 'student programme' was only specific to my hospital but its worth having a look:
www.enherts-tr.nhs.uk/get-involved/student-volunteer-programme-2/

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