How do I go into private medicine?

Why would they do a medical degree then? xD

Because they enjoy science or OP might just be a deluded year 11 student who has an idealistic (too optimistic) view of the realities of medicine.

Because the current political environment surrounding the NHS is **** - why would I go through 6 years of medical school and 10+ years of training just to get run into the ground, treated like **** by both my employer and my regulator, and get burnt out when I can just piss off and operate 3 days a week and make bank for it?



Compared to you, a year 13 student, who has an entirely realistic view of medicine and is qualified to try to put others in their place.

Because the current political environment surrounding the NHS is **** - why would I go through 6 years of medical school and 10+ years of training just to get run into the ground, treated like **** by both my employer and my regulator, and get burnt out when I can just piss off and operate 3 days a week and make bank for it?



Compared to you, a year 13 student, who has an entirely realistic view of medicine and is qualified to try to put others in their place.

How does your employer and regulator mistreat you ?

Is that what you said at your interview? Is that why you want to do medicine?

We work in a chronically underfunded, understaffed system that is persistently being exacerbated by the people at the top. They use their monopoly over the employment market to force doctors (and other healthcare staff) to keep the system running by spreading themselves thinly - working over their hours; working outside their paygrade; and doing the job of more than 1 person on a disappointingly common basis: so much so that it's not even a surprise any more - it's expected. It's part of being a "team player".

Doctors get spread so thin that it DOES lead to unsafe patient care - the system asks for mistakes to happen, and when they do happen, we can be held criminally accountable for those mistakes.

And now when we ARE held criminally accountable for those mistakes - our regulator has proven that they will go out of their way, against court and tribunal's recommendations, to ensure that we never work in the profession again. Including ordering the release of mandatory components of our "personal" training portfolios to use against us.

All this while being funded out of our own pocket - ~£25k over the course of our careers - when their primary role is to provide a public service.



No, it's not why I'm going to be a doctor. If I was in it "for the money and easy lifestyle", I could have chosen any other career. I'm in medicine because that's what I find rewarding. But loving medicine and wanting to help people doesn't mean you need to consign yourself to being a martyr. If you can do all that AND make fat stacks with good hours, more power to you, I say.

I don't have a burning urge to work in the private sector in the future, I just have the empathy to understand the totally valid reasons that other people might want to. Doctors working primarily in the NHS aren't any more moral or deserving than doctors working in the private sector lol. Doctors are people, too. They have just as much right to prioritise enjoying their life and being a complete human being as anyone else does.