Autism

I have autism and I was wondering how this will effect life at uni and as a doctor.

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Reply 2

-AlphaOmega-

I think it would help if you could tell a little more about yourself.

I've written these questions just as a brain dump. These questions aren't intended to cause offense and I appreciate that many of the things that these questions might suggest do not apply to you or even to many/most people with autism.

How old are you/what year of school are you in right now?

How is school going for you? Are you getting good grades? Are you able to work collaboratively with other students (including students you may not be friends with/you don't like)? Which subjects are you doing for your A levels and are you expected to get very good grades?

How does your autism affect you? In what ways do you think or act differently from neurotypical people, which things are harder or scarier or unpleasant or even impossible for you to do? Which things are easier for you, what are your talents?

Why do you want to be a doctor? What kind of doctor do you want to be?

Do you think you will be able to live away from your parents? You will probably have to live with housemates unless you/your parents have more money and can buy/rent you your own flat/studio.

Do you think that you can live with people that initially will be strangers to you? This is what student life is like for most people who live away from parents.

Do you think you can deal with the unpredictability of living with people who will not understand your quirks and who may not be willing to make (m)any accommodations for you/your quirks? If you live with others, you will find that they have their own schedule. You might have to wake up at 7 every day, but a housemate may not get up until 11, or even 4 PM if they no longer study but are full-time bar staff and start at 6 pm, they will probably come home some time around 2-5 AM. Another housemate may work shifts and might have different days/times they work every week. This means that people will be coming and going at their own convenience and this is something that you have to put up with. You will be sharing the kitchen, bathroom, sometimes a lounge, meaning that you might find other people's dirty dishes or scraps from cooking, but also that you are expected to clean up after yourself. You may find that you can't always use the shower when you want to because someone else is. Some housemates may be dating so you might sometimes find someone in your lounge or kitchen that you don't know. And when you want to study, a housemate who is a musician might want to practice their instrument. You might have noisy neighbours too. Maybe a housemate is throwing a birthday party in the home. You may end up becoming friends with some of the housemates but you may also find that some or even all don't want to be friends with you or you don't want to be friends with them, but you are still expected to be friendly considering that you live together. Is that possible for you? Maybe you want to do laundry on Saturday but what if a housemate has already started their laundry and they aren't done with the washer/drier until 3 h from now, but you have plans then. Can you deal with having to be flexible and plan ahead when you share facilities?

Can you plan your own work? University is different from secondary school (I am Dutch so I am speaking from my own experience having done most of my education in the Netherlands). I went to a higher level of secondary school where a fair bit of independence was expected but it's nothing like uni. At uni there's no one keeping track of whether you turn up or not, how you are doing, whether you have all your study materials with you, etc. At university you are an adult and are expected to be able to be on top of your own purchase of study materials, get all your own stuff that you need to study, wake up in time and plan your commute accordingly, etc. If you are late, no one is waiting for you. If you miss a lecture, I guess these days you might be able to watch it online but you might not be able to catch up on some practical lessons, like in the anatomy lab or the biochemistry lab. The average person will already have a lot of the skills needed to be a fully independent adult at uni or they quickly learn in the first term. Do you think that you will struggle with the expectations of having to fully manage your studies yourself?

Can you stay on top of taking care of yourself including doing your own laundry in time to have fresh clothes, including buying personal care products before they run out, buying new clothes when needed, will you stay on top of personal hygiene without someone to tell you to shower every day, etc? Are you good with money, as in, you can live within your means?

I did an undergraduate degree adjacent to medicine. One of the guys in my class ended up studying medicine after graduating from the degree we attended together. I think he might have some difficulties that appear to match with some form of autism but I don't know if it was recognised at the time or whether he has been diagnosed after this. It was very unpleasant to deal with him as a co-student, for various reasons. I think he might have eventually been able to fit in better, and he did finish the medical degree. I think he also did PhD research, so he is clearly bright. But what I understand from third-hand information from one of the people in his medical degree (a very close-knit group as it was a unique programme) is that he crashed out of the residency (specialty training?; training to become a consultant) because, from how I understood it, the limited 'plays' he had memorised for interacting with patients/people were no longer sufficient and he just wasn't going to be a good consultant. He is now becoming a doctor that evaluates people who make a disability claim (the shortest specialism/training (less than GP) in medicine in my home country, and probably one of the lowest appreciated medical doctor jobs).

My background was in biomedical research so I never had any clinical training, so I can't comment on that. But most MDs who work in medicine end up working with patients, and of course they work with coworkers (of various levels, from nurses to students, to residents, other consultants, administrative staff at the hospital, etc). If social interaction is not that easy for you, if you struggle to communicate appropriately with people who are (very) ill, then you might want to consider another career altogether, or perhaps consider which areas of medicine are more suited to your neurodivergence. Have you though about pathology? Possibly forensic pathology? What about clinical biochemist or clinical microbiologist (or similar)? It is also possible to never do anything clinical after your MD, you can go on to do a PhD and then do a career in medical research. If that would be of interest, I would reconsider the medical degree and figure out if biomedical sciences (or similar) isn't a better fit (this is what I did myself for my BSc and MSc, I did a PhD after). Note that if you do not do the medical degree that you can NOT treat patients and probably will NEVER work with patients (unless you would change to train for another kind of clinical job like nursing). If you ever want to work with patients then a medical degree is probably your best choice! If you want a career in research, an MD is probably not needed if you want to do biomedical research.

Have you reached out to an organisation/charity for neurodivergent people to ask if they know someone with autism who is also a medical doctor, and whether you could talk to them some time? If you get on well and they have time, this person might be willing to act as a kind of mentor for you (but do not expect this, as people are very busy).

In my country there is a selection to get into the medical degree programme. How this is done differs per uni and changes over time. For a while they used 'multiple mini interviews', I think it's called. These were short interviews with different people, including, I think, with an actor who played a patient, probably to see how you would approach them to tell them XYZ (you would have been given info on what they expect from you). Figure out if there is something like this in the UK and see if you can take part in something like this. Maybe you can even get a separate interview with a tutor or student support for medicine students, even before the selections for medicine, just to get more information on what is expected from you, what kind of person is suitable for a career in medicine, etc. Just a thought.

I hope this helps you to consider all aspects of studying in general. I hope you can find people who studied medicine and/or are already an MD to help you with more specific feedback on the medical degree programme and the specialty training after, as well as what it is like to do their job as a consultant.