Pathologist vs Biomedical Science

I have always planned to do a biomedical science degree from the age of 14, it has been my goal in life. However I am concerned, I am an academically able student and want to attend a good university. I would like to go to Imperial or UCL or Durham (perhaps Oxbrdige) etc. When I tell people I want to do BioMed everyone laughs and says it is for medicine rejects. Once I tell them my grades people look at me with confusion and say "why don't you just to medicine then?". The truth is I don't want to do medicine as I don't like the whole people side, I am a shy person and would be much happier in a lab. I thought I could do an accredited course however the top universities do not offer accredited biomedical courses and I can't go to a lower university as people already make fun out of me for doing a "lower degree". Which lead me to a research career, now I am worried as I feel there are not many jobs in research and I don't want to be unemployed.

I then found out about pathology and when reading about it, it seemed similar to biomedical science. I don't know much about it but I think you do a medicine degree, then 2 years general training then specialise for 6 years....I think. It also seemed to be higher paid and more jobs available. I am worried about applying to medicine as the general course doesn't overly appeal to me and I have no work experience in the medical field

Does anybody know anything about pathology? Is it hard to become a pathologist? Should I stick to biomedical science or change to medicine? Has anybody got experience with either of the two?

Thank you xx

I'm also a fairly shy person and it made the clinical years of medical school quite a struggle for me. You would have two years of Foundation Training on top of that with loads of direct patient contact as well. I honestly would not recommend doing medicine if you don't find the clinical aspects at least a little bit interesting; it would be a very long and hard slog to get through to a job you enjoy. However, it's up to you to decide whether it would be worth it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that histopathology (along with radiology) are both fairly vulnerable to being replaced by computers. The majority of the job is just pattern recognition, and at some point in the not too distant future computers might be able to do it better than people. Some of the pathologists I have spoken to said they were worried there might not be many jobs left in 20 or 30 years.


In terms of competition for training posts pathology isn't too bad, although definitely more difficult to get into than GP or general medicine (https://specialtytraining.hee.nhs.uk/Competition-Ratios). I have heard the postgraduate exams are difficult, but that's true for just about every specialty.

Would pharmacology appeal to you? There are opportunities to go into drug research, although I'm not too sure how competitive it is.


I wish you the best of luck, anyway

Thank you for replying, I hadn't thought about how technology may take over those jobs in the future. I think I would find direct contact with patients challenging. I am also apprehensive about starting a 5 year degree that I am not completely committed to. A lot of people have told me that those who study medicine are dedicated to it and have wanted to medicine for many years. I would like to get into research as I feel a laboratory setting would suit me. One thing I am concerned about is animal research and the ethics. When I mention going into research to people they always look at me in shock horror, thinking that I am going to be injecting cancer into mice. Do you know how much of pharmacology and research is based on animals. Could I do a biomedical science degree and then go into pharmacology?

Thanks once again

There are academic clinicians who may have significant research (and possibly teaching) responsibilities - and who may be less involved in day to day clinical attachments to patients. Additionally you needn't necessarily become a clinician following a medical degree - with a suitable intercalated degree and/or MBPhD (or if not, just a regular MBBS -> PhD progression) you could just enter academia full time and not necessarily work in a patient based environment at all (although the new regulations about the requirement for medical graduates to work in the NHS for 5 years may affect this - I'm unsure how this relates to research, or what the timescale it's on).

You could go into a Pharmacology PhD and onwards from there with a background in BMS depending on the BMS course, what options are available etc. However you could also do so with a Pharmacology degree. If biomedical research broadly is interesting to you and you have medicine level grades, you may wish to consider Cambridge's Natural Sciences course, which has many options to specialise in e.g. Pathology (their version of BMS, more or less - although it's a bit broader as depending on options can include microbiology virology, zoonoses etc) Physiology (...Development & Neuroscience being the full course/department title), Pharmacology or various other areas - from second year onwards.

You could well take e.g. Pathology, Physiology and Pharmacology in Part IB (second year) as a broad biomedically relevant background (or other combinations certainly). Additionally the IB Pathology course is the same lecture series as IB Medical students take for their...mechanisms of disease, or whatever it's called, course - so you're at the same level as the medics are anyway for certain.

There is also the Oxford BMS course (formerly Physiological Science) which unlike other BMS courses, due to the fact it's at, well Oxford, is clearly not for "medicine rejects only". In fact they specifically state they do not accept applications from students also applying to medicine (i.e. if they smell a medicine PS they are very likely to reject you) and the focus of the course is on fundamental biomedical research.

That said animal experimentation is common in biomedical science research, as there are several well validated animal models for disease mechanism etc. If this is an issue for you, then you may want to consider whether this route is more suited for you than the patient focused route of medicine (or another path entirely - for example more fundamental biochemistry molecular/cell/developmental biology. However, these areas also often use model organisms ranging from mice to zebrafish, from cell to embryo to whole organism, to empirically evaluate these hypotheses - in highly regulated conditions of course)

I don't think I will study natural sciences at Cambridge as I feel it is too broad. I understand what you mean in regards to going to a high rated university to study BMS as people will not classify you as "medicine reject" as Imperial said the same. I guess I am just concerned with the whole job aspect. I could see myself studying any degree like biomedical science, biochemistry and pharmacology. My only concern is what happens after my degree, what job will I find myself in. A lot of people tell me going into research is "risky" as there is little job stability. Once your project comes to end you may get "laid off" etc. In your opinion from an employment prospective which degree do you think would be the most useful in order to achieve a decent stable job with a good income?

Engineering.

Beyond that, academic research is a very stable environment, if somewhat overly bureaucratic. It's not uncommon after completing a PhD for students to remain in academia, doing a postdoc (or two or so ) then continuing as an academic, possibly in a teaching role - or alternately remaining within the university sector working as senior research lab managers and so on. I have no idea what role someone is working in where they get laid off after every single project; they are either a contractor working independently, rather than a salaried employee, or very bad at their job. It's better for most companies financially and practically to retain their core research staff - it's more likely technicians and lab managers would be laid off as necessary to accommodate the scope of the project.

On the subject of Natural Sciences, taking e.g. chemistry, physiology of organisms, biology of cells (and maths of course) first year, then any combination of relevant biological subjects (such as physiology, pharmacology, and pathology, or the biochemistry "pair" and one of those etc) in second year to go on to e.g. PDN or Pathology is no more "broad" than any other BMS course - you just get the benefit of going more into depth in some areas (and actually being numerate ). Of course there are many such options including the Oxford BMS course (or indeed, Biochemistry course) which itself precludes one from applying to Cambridge.

Thanks,although I have heard some horror stories about people graduating with mechanical engineering degrees and becoming unemployed for years. Perhaps I will consider the natural science course more carefully and take another look at it. However I have heard is is very intense! I would like to do a PhD in the future, but I have always been confused by the funding side of it. Do you pay tuition fees to do a PhD? I heard someone say that you get paid to do a PhD is that true? From what I have gathered online a lot of research jobs do require a PhD. I was considering becoming a Biomedical Scientist in an NHS lab, however that would mean doing an IBMS accredited degree. However most top unis don't have their courses accredited. I think that doing an accredited course would mean I am more likely to get employed afterwards as there is that stable job in the NHS. The two things that worry me is 1) I would go to a low university and would not push myself and 2) I may end up bored doing repetitive lab tests day after day.

If I did do a BMS degree and ended up unhappy do you think I could go into pharmacology or food science or work in a forensic lab? (Without having to do an additional degree)

Accredited biomedical sciences degrees are for people who want to use the BSc to go straight into work in a hospital laboratory. If you're looking to go into biomedical research, you'll need to do a PhD so it won't matter whether or not your BSc was accredited. That's the reason why the "top" univerisities don't bother with accreditation - because they're anticipating that the majority of their biomed graduates will be using the degree for an academic rather than vocational career.

There are lots of jobs in biomedical research and industry, what makes you think there isn't?

Amongst clinicians, pathologist is a broad term and can mean being a consultant in histopathology, microbiology and virology, haematology or chemical pathology. The amount of patient contact in these specialties varies from quite a lot (e.g. haematology) to usually none (e.g. histopathology). But what unites all of these specialties is that first and foremost you have to be interested in being a doctor, working in hospitals, and in practising clinical medicine i.e. using history taking, examination and various investigations to diagnose diseases. You have to be interested in having a job which is practical and aimed at patient care as opposed to academic and research oriented.

Which isn't to say that as a consultant in histopathology or whatever else you can't get involved in research - you absolutely can, however, your responsibilites and your working day will not be the same as a lecturer or professor in cell biology at a university who works in bench research.

What you need to think about first and foremost is, do you want to be a doctor - meaning that you need to have a minimal interest in all aspects of medicine including ones which are completely removed from lab work e.g. psychiatry, GP, obstetrics, etc. If the idea of spending years studying and working in these areas does not appeal at all, then you would probably be happier doing a lab based life sciences degree and then doing a PhD imho.

You also need to be less bothered about what other people are saying tbh - lots of biomed students have no interest in clinical medicine or being a doctor, if people are looking down on you for wanting to do biomed, that's their problem.

So do you absolutely need a PhD to go into research? Could you do a msc or msci and still get a job in research?

x

I'm studying medicine and histopathology is one of the specialties I'm potentially interested in. Whilst it's true that pathologists don't spend much time in direct contact with patients, they're still doctors who review the patient history and scans they've had etc in conjunction with studying tissue samples you get from the patient to make the right diagnosis.

There's two main types of scientist that work in hospital labs. There's the biomedical scientists which are the technicians that do the most hands-on lab work. For this, you need a biomedical science degree that's accredited. Then there's the clinical scientists, also sometimes called healthcare scientists, who tend to work more in analysing the results of lab tests and making diagnoses e.g. in genetics, immunology, microbiology. For this, you need a more academic training and normally people do a biology or biomedical degree and then apply for a training post. The salaries are also higher and a consultant clinical scientist can earn similar to a senior doctor.

This website compares the 3 different options pretty well! https://www.rcpath.org/discover-pathology/i-want-a-career-studying.html

The other option is academia, and typically you'd do a biology degree and then PhD. You said you're not sure about Natural Sciences because it's not pure biology but I would strongly suggest you think twice about that if you want to go into academia. Science doesn't fall into biology, chemistry, physics, those are just man made concepts. Some parts of biology do need a reasonable understanding of chemistry and physics, such as structural biology. And now there's a big drive in computational biology and systems biology in academia where having some university taught maths or physics would be useful.

You could work in a support role with an MSc. But if you actually want to be doing and directing research yourself, you need a PhD - being as it is a research qualificaiton. And then relevant post docs etc.

A Healthcare Scientist is not a Clinical Scientist. Healthcare Scientist is the other term for a Biomedical Scientist attempted to be brought in under Modernising Scientific Career's but it hasn't stuck.

Hello, I graduated from a BSc in Biomedical Sciences at UCL this year, and I'm starting medical school later in september.

To be perfectly honest with you, a lot of the people on my course came to Biomed (myself included) because we didn't get into medicine - but I did meet people that genuinely wanted to do biomed, so they applied. However, a lot of the people as they progressed through the years found that they wanted to do research instead, so a majority of them are now doing a masters in a field that they found interesting.

I personally wanted to do medicine all through my Biomed degree, and others that were like me applied and some got into medical school - but from what I saw, this was a minority and there were many more people that wanted to go into research.

In terms of being accredited, as most of the graduates go into further study (masters, medical school etc), I don't think they are.

Also, I think I read that you were asking about pharmacology. The Biomed degree at UCL is structured so that from year 2, you can choose 'streams' ranging from physiology, immunology, pharmacology, neuroscience etc and can study modules that you have an interest in, so even though it is a Biomed degree, you can tailor modules that interest you and only study those!

Hi, I was thinking of putting UCL down as one of my options for biomedical science. How have you found the course? Is it interesting and what are the lectures like and practicals etc? Is there a great sense of community and belonging there? What did you get at A level if you don't mind me asking, because the grades for UCL are really high, and if you got AAA you could of done medicine right? That was my thinking those who went to high up universities to study BMS probably really wanted to study the course in the first place, otherwise they would have gone into medicine as they have the grades. Thanks in advance.