Why I became a doctor (and then a physician)

Becoming a doctor

I went to medical school 50 years ago before it was necessary to give a good reason for wanting to do so. Sitting in the smoke-filled sixth form common room with my UCCA form (application form for applying to University), I applied for medicine because I liked biology and science, nothing else attracted my attention, and the careers’ master – who gave me a disinterested 30 seconds of his time – said, ‘that’s fine’.

My experience of doctors and medicine was very limited. I remember a bluff dark-suited man visiting the house when one of my brothers was ill. He told my mother off. I don’t know the reason, but there’s no doubt that gave her a dressing down, and what I’ve never forgotten is that she didn’t fight back. I never witnessed another instance of her not giving at least as good as she got. The other occasions were when various minor mishaps, usually sporting, led me to attend local A&E departments to obtain (on different occasions) stitches, a plaster cast and a surgical collar.

The vocational element of my medical school interview in Cambridge began with the question, ‘do you know what doctors actually do?’; to which I replied ‘no, not really’; leading to, ‘don’t worry, most people don’t’, and then onto something that the interviewer found more interesting. ‘Do you know how you’d measure the pH inside a mitochondrion?’, he asked. I wasn’t sure I knew what a mitochondrion was but had the presence of mind to check (an organelle inside a cell). After suggesting you might use some sort of probe (‘but they’re very small indeed’, he said), I came up with what I later recognised was a decent suggestion, ‘perhaps you could use a dye that changes colour’. My sense is that this was the moment he ticked ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’ on the interview score sheet and the starting gun fired to begin my career in medicine. It seemed a good thing at the time, and looking back I’m pleased to say I think it was.

Becoming a physician

After three years in Cambridge doing a degree in biomedical sciences I moved to the Oxford Clinical School in 1978, giving me my first taste of medicine other than as a patient with minor trauma. I and my fellow students spent the next three years following a standard rotation through clinical specialties.

Looking back on this it’s clear that I was influenced more by the people I met than the various subject matters. Some things I later recognised as being interesting and exciting had all life sucked out of them. The surgical environment was downright unpleasant, and any sense of humour seemed verboten in general practice, O&G and psychiatry. There were, however, some medical juniors (as they were called in those days) and consultants who seemed bright, interested in what they did and willing to talk about it; who didn’t regard a question as an impertinent threat to their authority. I decided to become a physician. It seemed a good thing at the time, and looking back I’m pleased to say I think it was, although I’m sure I would have been equally good or bad, or happy or sad, doing a range of other things.