On Wednesday 11^th February, Dr Roy, class of 1992 and now clinical lead of Princess Alexandra Hospital’s Cardiology Department, came to deliver a talk to Years 10-13 students. He provided valuable insights into the life of a Doctor and guidance on getting into and working in medicine, whilst sharing lesser-known (yet important!) facts about a future in the medical field.

As a Senior Doctor with over 25 years of experience (14 of which as a consultant), Dr Roy is very experienced in his field. After graduating from King’s College GKT medical school, he became a researcher, spending time doing lab work and research. This led him to discover his interest in the heart and he ultimately decided to specialise in Cardiology. As he commented “this has been a great career, which I find very rewarding”.

Dr Roy mentioned the many opportunities within medicine: the large variety of both medical and surgical specialties; local or overseas fellowships; options to specialise with additional training; clinical academia, and so much more - meaning that there really is something for everyone. He also covered the practical benefits of a medical career, including job security, variety in what you do and transferrable problem-solving & teamwork skills. Dr Roy’s personal favourite part of the job continues to be the reward of saving patients.

Conversely, several challenges surrounding medicine were mentioned, including the current “bottleneck” issue with a lack of training places resulting in unemployed doctors, and the lack of regularity in the job. In fact, according to Dr Roy, his role is a 9-5 (“on paper, they say!”), but very often goes beyond that, which is also true, if not worse, for Junior doctors.

Finally,  Dr Roy gave his personal advice to students about medicine: focus on exams, prepare for the UCAT (medical admission exam) and gain work experience, which, by talking with other doctors, inspired him to pursue medicine. But his final piece of advice about medicine was asking students to “think hard - why do you want to do it?” demanding self-reflection, reading and work experience to find out what it’s like to be a doctor and whether it is truly for you.

Ananyaa in Year 11 described Dr Roy’s talk as “inspiring - it helped me gain a lot of insight into medicine”. Overall, Dr Roy’s expertise on medicine, along with his experience as a Doctor, was very informative for students and helped them build an accurate understanding of a career in medicine.

Main contributor to the article: Samik, Year 11 student.