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Social life of UK doctors

Throughout your 20s, so uni and foundation training, how was your social life. Did you only have doctor friends?

I didn't graduate till 25 (gap year + 6 year course), so was at uni for the first half of my 20s. Social life as a pre-clinical student was pretty much the same as any other undergraduate. Got a bit more difficult during clinical years as got sent away on placement a lot, plus many of my non-medic friends had graduated and left.

Once I graduated I moved to London, where a lot of my non-medic friends were, so we saw each other reasonably often, though the demands of rotas etc can make it tricky to be present for everything. My F1 hospital was very sociable (pub on site!) so that was great, obviously predominantly doctor friends though. Continued to hang out with old uni friends when possible, and newer medic friends throughout SHO years.

Things are different now as I moved out of London, as did quite a few others, so we're more spread apart. Specialty training + having kids changed things a lot. Most of my non-work socialising is at mum & baby groups now!

Reply 2

Democracy

Social life at uni was fine - usual going out with friends, MedSoc, etc.

Social life in FY1 was also fine - I moved to a bigger city and the hospital had an active mess with regular social events. Clearly it's not going to be comparable to being a fresher at university, but you also wouldn't want it to be while you're trying to figure out a demanding job with long hours :tongue:

After that I moved to a small rural town for FY2 where everything shut at 5 PM and everyone lived miles apart so socialising was difficult. The hospital mess was inactive and two of my jobs didn't really feature other junior doctors, so opportunities for socialising were pretty scarce. Positives? I really got on with my seniors (still in touch with my GP supervisor) and enjoyed driving through the countryside to get to work without endless stop-start traffic, but on the whole I was glad when that year was over and I moved to London to do a fellowship.

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