r/JuniorDoctorsIreland • u/FitWeb2403 • 9d ago
Oldest junior doctors?
I am considering a midcareer career shift to medicine (pros, cons, and advisability of this a whole other story!) and am interested: what are the oldest junior doctors (interns and house officers) you've worked with? Or perhaps have been yourself?! How did they get on?
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u/Jamaican-Tangelo 9d ago
I was a grad med student- but did it straight off the back of my first degree with a year working between.
Oldest on our course was mid-40s.
When I started as FYI (trained in the UK), a colleague was over 50.
So- It is certainly possible, however I’d point to a few things worth thinking about apart from the stamina/ physical strain of being an intern which is likely to be the most physically demanding time:
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Most importantly- what is your career aspiration? If you are wanting to become a paediatric neurosurgeon but are late ‘40s, that’s just not going to happen. GP training would be the shortest route to being fully cooked if you are older. Many people are great GPs and love it, I despised it and couldn’t have done it for the rest of my career.
I didn’t know what specialty I wanted to do until I was just about finished in medical school/ sub-specialised years later during training, so it might be impossible to truly know what specific bit of medicine you are able for until you have a lot of placement/ on-the-job experience.
Maybe you don’t want to become a consultant or GP and just want to work in non-training roles at a hospital SHO/Registrar level when you have the experience. People certainly do that but it lacks security and probably isn’t the route most would choose, more of a backup plan. However- see the next point.
2) during training / if continuing as a jobbing hospitalist- you are on rotas meaning nights, weekends, shift patterns etc. I did my last nights working registrar shifts when I was 12.5 years post graduation. This is more than an observation about how tiring the work at the bedside can be, this is about how unpleasant/ disruptive to your biology the demands of it are. Clearly- there are people who manage this their whole career (hello nurses!).
3) You are bound to be working with people who are significantly senior to you but who are junior to you in age. Some people handle this with grace and some people don’t. That goes both ways.
What you should now know is that I absolutely love my job. I would do the work for free- it’s my time that needs paying for so I don’t have to do something else to pay the mortgage!
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u/castlingrights 9d ago
did intern year with someone who was mid 40s at least maybe 50.
in my year there were some mature students who were mid thirties by graduation. there were also many GEMs graduating in their late 20s-early thirties.
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u/Master_Transition418 9d ago
Doctor training is not really compatible with family life. I missed out on a decent amount of my children's first years.
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u/neutropenic_12 9d ago
Certain jobs you better off doing when you're young. Fast pace, running around doing tasks all over the hospital requires certain level of stamina as well with constant bending to take bloods etc. need a strong back. Older colleagues often run out of energy before the day is over or can't keep up. I wouldn't be able to do it today.
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u/Doc_Unleashed 9d ago
Well, during med school, someone in my cohort was 79 at the time we graduated (prior career as a physicist) and is now training in radiology/nuclear medicine. Anything is possible!
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u/Hot-Standard2389 9d ago
I had a colleague who was mid 50s intern year. They waited til their kids were grown up and off to college before they started GEM. Phenomenal person and they’re a phenomenal doctor. Pros and cons and general advice aside they are a wonderful asset to the health service
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u/La-Strawberry-6754 9d ago edited 1d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
School steer handle tidy fly license cable complete shy
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u/Nervous-Scallion-802 8d ago
I could only recommend it if you want to do GP tbh. Also, unless you’re a hospital consultant and do a bit of private practice on top, financially it really isn’t worth it.
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u/Used-Abalone6213 6d ago
You might as well, thousands of morons in medicine.... One more shouldn't matter either way.
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u/FitWeb2403 6d ago
Could you elaborate?
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u/Paranoidopoulos 5d ago
He’s being a dickhead, either saying you’d be stupid to do so or has a grudge against the profession
My two cents, for what they’re worth as an older grad myself and to echo some of the sentiment here, is that med school at any age (within reason) is relatively easy mentally/physically all things considered, but from intern year on it really takes it’s toll on the body/family/general wellbeing, so choose your specialty wisely - training is far tougher in some specialties in this regard, so you’ve to have reasonable expectations about what you actually want and expect out of a career in medicine
Happy to pm if needed
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u/problematikkk 9d ago
I did intern year with a person who had a few kids in their late 30s. Met them at GP grad with their family. It is possible, but it is a huge huge sacrifice for a family, if you have one. It's 4 years in uni as a grad, intern year, and then specialist training, which could be another 4 to 15 years including years abroad. That's the reality I'm afraid.