I’m 24 in November and I have just suffered my 2nd failure at getting into medical school. I’ve always wanted to be a doctor and have consistently seeked out work experience to achieve this goal (including going all the way to Ghana to do a 5 week elective in the surgical department of a teaching hospital, volunteering with the elderly and children on the autistic spectrum for 2 years and working as a receptionist within the NHS for a year) and so after a 3 month period of cursing the GAMSAT/UKCAT and deciding to give up on the whole idea it’s not surprising that my desire to pursue medicine has begun to stir once again. Its become such a big part of me and I won’t be happy until I have a ‘Dr’ in front of my name. More specifically I want to become an obstetrician /gynaecologist. However, having calculated the 4 years of medical school if I get in next year, the 2 foundation years and the 7 years to specialise I’m feeling a bit apprehensive. I don’t want to be poor, baby less and still struggling away in the library at 37!

So my questions are:

a) How does obstetrics and gynaecology compare to other specialities in terms of difficulty, nothing in medicine is easy but is it relatively harder than the others. I’m worried about balancing a family, social life and the endless exams/training

b) What is the salary like while you are specialising? As far as I recall, junior doctors start on about £30 K when working for the NHS, how does this change over the 7 years (on average)

c) Is there much competition for jobs? I don’t want to work my ass off and then have to work even harder to put all that hard work into practice?

In the end I just want to enjoy the job but I don’t want to have to wait until 37 before that enjoyment starts….