Graduate Entry Medical Student, Quality Improvement Officer in the NHS





Where and when did you study philosophy?



I read a BA and MA in philosophy at Durham University in the northeast of England between 2002 and 2006.

What excites you about philosophy?



At the time that I was studying philosophy full time I wanted to get to grips with logic, metaphysics, and then philosophy of science before building on this and attempting ethics and other areas. I appreciate that others found subjects like applied ethics more accessible than the more abstract subjects, but I wanted logic to give me tools to tackle other areas as rigorously and systematically as possible. I also enjoyed post-Kantian European philosophy.

I loved the rigour, and loved the breadth of philosophy – I remember reading prospectuses cover to cover weighing up what I wanted to study for my undergraduate degree and thinking philosophy would hit some of the most interesting aspects of many degrees – politics, religion, science, art, and so on. For both my undergraduate and masters dissertations I chose topics in the philosophy of science. I also found phenomenology very interesting but especially challenging at that time.

Since leaving philosophy I have found greater appreciation for ethics, especially of mental health and its practical applications in making well thought-through clinical decisions. And phenomenology continues to be very relevant.

Could you tell me something about your career?

I am currently in year 3 of a 4 year graduate entry medical (GEM) degree at Swansea University. Although the course I am on is fairly integrated with early patient contact, the first two years were mainly in the classroom, learning about human physiology, biochemistry, disease mechanisms, and so on. The latter two years of the course involve rotating through placements in all major specialties for 1-5 weeks each. This part of the course takes place on hospital wards, A&E, outpatient clinics, and in GP surgeries. We meet and interview lots of patients, learn and practice clinical skills to examine and investigate signs and symptoms, try to put this information together to come up with a list of likely differential diagnoses, and then try to come up with a management plan with patients. I am currently in my final week of our surgery block, which I have greatly enjoyed, and will be rotating to paediatrics next.

Alongside the course I served as a British Medical Association (BMA) representative for my year group helping tackle local issues and campaigning for a fair junior doctor contract last year by representing our views in local meetings, national conferences, and a protest in London last year. I have also been involved in mental health research including suicide prevention work and eating disorders research through the Institute of Life Sciences at Swansea University.

Getting onto a fast track medical degree required sitting an exam and experience to demonstrate commitment to the career. To this end I worked in a mental health NHS trust while doing biomedicine BSc modules in the evenings for several years in between my philosophy and medical degrees. Attending a clinical ethics committee was a good bridge between the two, as was seeing medicine from an organizational perspective since I was based in the care quality team at the headquarters of a large NHS Trust with overview of many clinical teams.

How does your philosophical training and formation help you in your current career?

My philosophical training helps me now in a few ways, including:

Ethics – be it end of life decisions, detaining or treating patients who are a danger to themselves against their will, assessing the competence of a child to make decisions about their health care, discussing abortion rights with a patient – these are every day parts of doctors’ jobs that it is helpful to have given thought to before being faced with patients who may be distressed and want guidance or advice



be it end of life decisions, detaining or treating patients who are a danger to themselves against their will, assessing the competence of a child to make decisions about their health care, discussing abortion rights with a patient – these are every day parts of doctors’ jobs that it is helpful to have given thought to before being faced with patients who may be distressed and want guidance or advice Phenomenology is very much part of medicine – patients’ accounts are a huge part of the information we have to try to understand what is happening and how best to manage it initially and on an ongoing basis.

is very much part of medicine – patients’ accounts are a huge part of the information we have to try to understand what is happening and how best to manage it initially and on an ongoing basis. All those essays we wrote help with project management, completing our coursework and contributing to journal articles

help with project management, completing our coursework and contributing to journal articles A methodical, thoughtful, thorough approach to problems be it from patients, the team or the organization you’re working in is usually effective.

Being able to see problems from different perspectives can help with understanding individual patients’ ideas and concerns and communicating the medical approach to the issues they are experiencing.

I also tend to be drawn to causes, be it helping some of the most vulnerable people through the suicide prevention public health work or lobbying the government for fair contracts – ethics in action.



What career advice would you give recent philosophy graduates?

Although I had the idea of going on to study medicine at the end of my masters in philosophy, I wanted to work for a few years first and there are so many jobs that just require ‘a degree’ or ‘at least a 2:1 in any degree’ – I had plenty of options, it was just a question of figuring out what I wanted to do next and how to go about it.

Straight after my masters my immediate priority was to move to London, and I initially worked in events as a waitress, butler, and floor manager to tide me over. It was physically hard work and very social – pretty much the opposite of the hours I had been spending in the library. Surprisingly, I saw a career advice leaflet for philosophy students at my current university included ‘medical management’ as a possibility – I can’t say I had connected the two but that work did also suit me so maybe there is something to that.

Trust your instincts – I enjoyed and still enjoy philosophy a lot, but in the short term needed to do a very different type of work and longer term have found a path that utilizes all these skills in a balance that suits me better – medicine is academically rigorous but also practical and social. It’s also very broad with a huge range of specialties and roles, so I am fairly confident I will be able to use my strengths (including those my experiences in philosophy helped me develop) in the long term.