hi everyone oli here and welcome back to the channel once again I've had a lot of feedback recently from you guys indicating that you would like the videos to be a bit less rambley and kind of more single topic per episode so the videos can be a lot shorter you can consume them easier and they're a bit more interesting so I've heard you loud and clear I'm going to be trying to do that for the next few and I just want to answer a few questions across the next few videos that are gassed a lot the most common of which is what specialty do I want to do what sort of doctor is it that I want to be and that's a really big question I think for anyone that's either in medical school or wanting to go to medical school because with medical training it takes a really long time to train in whatever specialty you want to do even the shortest pathway something like GP you have to go all the way through medical school first you're normally looking at five years and then you've got to do your f1 and f2 so you're up to seven years and then four GP which is the shortest training pathway it's an additional three years of training on top of that so the minimum time investment you're looking at to be fully trained in any of the medical pathways is 10 years whereas most specialties take significantly longer than that and that's kind of what we're going to be talking about as it applies to me and I've got a preface all of this just by saying I'm in my second year of grad entry medicine I just started the clinical phase of my medical education got through my one pre clinical year as to where I am that's kind of the equivalent of starting the third year of a normal five year undergraduate medicine course so the big question is what specialty do I want to do now at the moment based on everything that I've experienced so far I'm pretty convinced that I want to be some sort of surgeon so I rocked up to medical school here at Warwick with my undergrad degree in molecular biology which I quite enjoy but I knew it kind of fundamentally wasn't why I wanted to do I've never had much human biology training either in the molecular biology aspects or the Anatomy side of things and we've done bits and pieces but it wasn't human biology focused my course it was more general a lot of bacteriology as well and I just remember having the anatomy teaching and just being in raptured like right from the start and it was even better because at Warwick we're taught with plaster nets most medical schools I think still use dissections and pro sections at Warwick we don't do that we do have fresh tissue sometimes if we get lucky but virtually everything is taught with plaster nets and what they are are preserved on atomic all specimens and they're absolutely amazing they're very very expensive and they take a long time to prepare that's why most med schools don't use them we're very lucky to have them at Warwick I do consider it a massive privilege to be taught with plastinated specimens and I just found that I was completely in love with it I started wanting to learn more so I'd start reading things like surgical textbooks and looking at websites like teach me Anatomy all the time I reached out to 3d for medical who make complete Anatomy which is now in its 2019 version I became an ambassador for them I would just sit on evening and like draw anatomical structures make notes on the nerves and the arteries and it was just it completely captured me and that's why I think at some level I want to be some sort of surgeon the the idea of being able to have that direct hands-on interaction with a patient that would be what I delivered as my treatment it's all based around kind of technical skill as well as being able to manage the patient afterwards that based on the things I've seen so far all the things I've read about surgery all the surgeons that I've chatted to I just have I have the feeling in my head that that's kind of what I want to do but all these surgery is massive what sort of surgeon do you want to be that's a really good question dear viewer because there are indeed very many types of surgery they all have quite different training pathways as well I'm going to do another video talking about training pathways for different specialties but to be a consultant surgeon in virtually any specialty you're kind of looking at a good eight years of postgraduate training after your f1 and f2 assuming that you don't do fellowships or PhD or anything I'll take any breaks from the prescribed training pathway so it's a long investment so that's something that I'm bearing in mind particularly for the first few years of the training program I've heard it's very time demanding it consumes your life I mean that's true I think with medicine to to an extent whatever you do but surgery definitely has the reputation for being like that so which surgical specialty am i aiming at my approach to specialty right because you have to do a lot of groundwork to prepare I think for virtually any specialty you want to do particularly the ones that are pretty competitive and the ones that are the most competitive at least as far as my current knowledge goes in terms of surgery are nearer surgery and cardiothoracics and so my logic is when I was kind of thinking what do I want to do in the future what I'm statistically probably better off doing is picking one of the very competitive ones doing the groundwork as if that's what i 100% want to do and kind of gearing myself up mentally for that and making sure that I'm doing all the things I need to be doing like getting a Surgical log book going to surgical conferences showing commitment to these specialties early on getting involved with the surgical Society this is my third shock committee t-shirt that I'm wearing right now is getting that shadowing experience with surgeons and publishing papers that are relevant to those fields then my logic kind of is that if I don't decide that I want to do one of those very competitive specialties later on I've at least done a lot of the things that are applicable to many specialties so I can show that I have a log book in surgery I know how to write papers I know how to do the research I've spent time with surgeons actually thinking about whether it's the type of career I want but obviously this all does have to be tied into personal interest what is the area of medicine that at the moment I'm the most interested in the answer to that is neurology I absolutely loved my Niro block in first year it was the hardest block of the year by significant margin but also the most interesting it was taught really well the head of block Don Collins is like an amazing teacher for material that is very very difficult particular if you're someone like me who I knew one neuron was going in I did know about muscle contraction and things like that but in terms of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and neuroanatomy the really kind of meaty juicy stuff I didn't know any of it beforehand and I absolutely can't pretend that I have not been influenced by Henry Marcia's books do no harm as I've said many many times was the first medical book I ever read and when I was thinking about going to medical school and what being a doctor might be like and just all the experience I've had talking to neurosurgeons and seeing what they do reading about neurosurgery and watching procedures basically I think neurosurgery is gonna be the answer at least for the near future it gives me something to aim for because it ties in I love the neuro from a kind of scientific interest perspective I'm pretty sure I want to be a surgeon so logically kind of neurosurgery might be for me so that's the answer to the question that is the main specialty that I'm interested in right now but I have to say obviously there are so many specialties that I have not seen yet I'm spending some time with an endocrine surgeon at the moment on my current placement ivory on trauma and orthopedics after that Pediatrics actually is a specialty that really interests me but I've had no experience in it so far herbs and Gainey is also a specialty that looks really interesting I've not had any practical experience with it but it's seen by many people as kind of a middle ground between medicine and surgery because you do a bit of both but that's enough for me guys I want to know what you think if you're at medical school what specialty are you thinking about applying for if you're not at med school yet what have you seen and what have you done work experiencing what have you read about what have you seen online what specialty doctor do you think you would like to be even if you're not on med school yet I think it's perfectly okay to have those interests early on and I'm totally the same I'm going in with this idea that maybe neurosurgery is what I wanted to do but there's still so much time in between now and finishing med school and even I've got my foundation years to do before I apply for specialty training so I just want to go ahead with an open mind see as much as I can see of everything and we'll see what happens in the future thanks very much for watching guys please be sure to hit that like button for me leave a comment subscribe to the channel you can go and follow me on twitter and instagram at post-grad medic and go and check out the website post-grad Medicom for more free videos just like this take care and I will see you next time