Why I Left Medicine and Why I'm Going Back - Ali Abdaal
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If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
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How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
dailymotion.com/arshian
How to guarantee you regret your life:https : //dai.ly/x93180y
My honest advice to a perfectionist:https : //dai.ly/x9319i4
My honest advice to someone who’s doing too much : https://dai.ly/x9319ty
My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78
My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom : https://dai.ly/x931ex2
If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y
How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6
How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42
How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
00:01This is gonna be a little bit of a rambly video
00:03where I explain the thought process
00:05behind why I left medicine
00:07and quit being a doctor about six months ago
00:09and why my mind has now changed
00:11and I'm now moving back into the medical world.
00:15If that sounds like it might be up your street,
00:17then grab a cup of tea and we can talk about it.
00:19If not, that's totally cool.
00:21Lots of other more valuable videos on this channel
00:23and elsewhere on the internet and off the internet.
00:25So feel free to skip this one if you like.
00:27So let's start with a little bit of context.
00:29If you have a life and you haven't been following
00:32my kind of life trajectory very, very carefully,
00:35basically from 2012 to 2018,
00:37I was a medical student at Cambridge University.
00:392017, I started this YouTube channel
00:42in my fifth year, final year of medical school.
00:44And then for two years after that,
00:462018 through to August 2020,
00:50I was working as a foundation year doctor
00:53in the East Anglia region of the UK.
00:56Now, when we work as junior doctors,
00:58foundation year doctors,
01:00we don't have a specialty at that point.
01:01We are rotating amongst lots of different specialties
01:04to try and figure out what specific thing
01:06in medicine we'd like to do.
01:08In America, the closest thing would be an intern.
01:10And the idea is after these two years,
01:12we then make a decision as to what specialty or residency,
01:15we don't really call it residency,
01:16but that's what the American system is,
01:17what specialty we wanna go into.
01:19At that point, we can decide,
01:20do we wanna go for internal medicine
01:21or do we wanna go for surgery
01:23or do we wanna go for some run through specialties
01:25like psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology
01:29and like neurosurgery?
01:30And this is a pretty big decision
01:30because this decision about which specialty
01:32you wanna go into really dictates a huge chunk of your life.
01:35It like dictates who you spend your time with,
01:37what you do, maybe even who you marry,
01:40maybe who you meet, who your friends are,
01:41like it's like a ridiculously important decision.
01:43And so in the UK, what the majority of doctors do
01:45is that after the first two years of the foundation program,
01:49we will take a break.
01:50And a lot of people take a year out,
01:51sometimes two, sometimes three to explore other interests.
01:55So let's say I thought I wanted to go into surgery,
01:58but I thought, I'm not really sure
01:59I want some more experience.
02:00For a year, I could spend it doing extra shifts
02:03in a local hospital or going to Australia
02:05and doing some surgery stuff
02:07or maybe doing a research project in surgery.
02:09And then at the end of my year,
02:10I'll be able to decide, you know what,
02:11it's surgery for me, I'm now gonna officially apply
02:14to a surgery training program.
02:16And so for me, this gap,
02:17this sort of two year mark came at August 2020
02:20where I had to decide, okay,
02:22do I want to go straight into a training program
02:24or do I wanna take a break from medicine
02:26and do something else?
02:28Crucially, you actually make this decision
02:29about a year in advance.
02:30So in August 2019, I had to decide a year from now,
02:34do I think I want to go directly into specialty training
02:37or instead, do I wanna take a break from medicine
02:39and do something else?
02:40And in August 2019, when I made this decision,
02:43my plan was I definitely wanna take some time
02:45out of medicine.
02:46And I liked the idea of traveling
02:48to different countries around the world.
02:50I liked the idea of maybe going to Australia
02:52to do some emergency medicine stuff.
02:53At the time, I was also dabbling with the idea
02:55of maybe moving to America instead.
02:58And so I was thinking, okay, come August 2020,
02:59I'm gonna take a year out
03:00and then I'll be able to prepare for my USMLE
03:02and do all this kind of stuff.
03:03And so really this decision that I made
03:05to take a break from medicine, to leave medicine
03:07was made absolutely ages ago,
03:09but it's just like, because it just takes so long
03:11for the application process to happen,
03:13it ended up being August 2020
03:15where I kind of left the job when my two years ended.
03:18I'm giving you the specific timeline
03:19because I've had occasional comments on Instagram
03:21saying that how can you feel okay with leaving medicine
03:25in the middle of a pandemic?
03:26There's a lot to unpack there.
03:29But the main one, honestly,
03:29is that I chose to make that decision to leave medicine
03:33way before the pandemic was even a thing.
03:36And this is just how the system works in the UK.
03:37You apply for training a whole year
03:39before you actually start training.
03:41And so me and most of my friends
03:42chose not to go straight into a training program.
03:45This was before we knew the pandemic was a thing.
03:47The other reasons as to my thoughts
03:48around kind of leaving medicine in the middle of a pandemic,
03:50I will save for later in the video
03:51where I talk about why I'm going back.
03:53But in terms of the background context,
03:54that's one reason why I left medicine
03:57because it's a very natural logistical career gap
03:59when you're in the UK.
04:00It's not like we think, hey, screw medicine,
04:03I'm going to leave, I'm going to quit.
04:04It's more like two years down the line,
04:05you're like, okay, cool, I've got a natural career gap
04:08where I now need to decide what specialty to go into.
04:11I'm not 100% sure of that decision yet.
04:13Therefore, let's take a step back.
04:15Let's hop off the kind of rotating treadmill
04:17of medical training programs
04:19and let's assess where I want my life to go.
04:20So that was the logistical part.
04:22I think the slightly more interesting part,
04:23at least for me, about why I chose to leave medicine,
04:26six months ago, is because I really, really, really
04:29wasn't sure what specialty I wanted to go into, number one.
04:33And B, I wasn't even sure
04:34if I wanted to stay in medicine at all.
04:36This decision to go to med school was a decision
04:38that I made around about the age of 16
04:40when I was choosing my A-level exams.
04:42And because medical school
04:43is such a competitive admissions process,
04:45often people make that decision even before that point.
04:47So from the age of 13 and 14,
04:50I sort of had in the back of my mind
04:51that I might want to go to med school.
04:53And so I started doing St. John's Ambulance
04:55and volunteering for stuff
04:56and just trying to get my kind of resume up to the point
04:59where I could have a competitive
05:01medical school application.
05:02Now, one thing that my mom gets really pissed off about
05:04is like, you know, you decided to do medicine,
05:06why are you not now seeing it through?
05:08And the thing that I always say is that, look,
05:10I made this decision when I was like in my mid-teens
05:12and it's now been like 12 years
05:14since I've made the decision to do medicine.
05:16And I think it's pretty unreasonable
05:18to expect a decision made at the age of 14, 15, or 16
05:21where you really don't know.
05:23Like I had no idea what other careers were out there.
05:25My mom's a doctor, a few people in my family are doctors.
05:28When you're Asian and you have good grades,
05:30it's just like a standard thing.
05:31And like most of my friends' parents were doctors.
05:34It's hard to know like genuinely
05:36when you're in that position
05:37what other possible careers are out there.
05:39I knew I could be a doctor, I could be a vet,
05:40I could be a lawyer and an engineer.
05:41And I really didn't have much scope
05:43for like what other career paths out there.
05:45And it was only really when I was like 17
05:47and friends of mine in school
05:49were applying to study history or English or maths.
05:52And I'd be like, why are you studying history?
05:53And they were like, because I like history.
05:54And I used to think like
05:55what can you do with a history degree?
05:56Like surely all you can do with a history degree
05:58is be a history teacher, which is obviously not true.
06:01There's like sort of thousands of different jobs
06:03you could go into.
06:04But me sitting there at age 14 to 16,
06:07I really didn't know that these kinds of jobs existed.
06:09That's not to say that if I had known
06:10I would have changed my mind.
06:11And I still think the decision to go to med school
06:14was one of the best things ever.
06:15And I don't regret a moment of it.
06:17But in some ways I kind of prefer the American system here
06:19where you kind of go through high school,
06:21you go through college,
06:22and then you decide what you want to,
06:24well, you know, what you want
06:25your postgraduate qualification to be.
06:27Because at that point
06:27you have a little bit more life experience.
06:29You've tried a few more things.
06:31Whereas here in the UK,
06:32we have to decide at the age of 16,
06:33you know, what you want your whole
06:35like career trajectory to look like.
06:36And I personally don't want to be welded
06:40to a decision that I made when I was 16.
06:42And I don't want that decision
06:43to necessarily shape the rest of my life
06:45unless I decide that it's actively what I want to do.
06:47And to be honest, throughout medical school as well,
06:49I knew that it wasn't medicine itself
06:52that brought me fulfilment and joy and meaning.
06:54The things that brought me fulfilment, joy and meaning
06:56were number one, teaching.
06:57I used to really, really, really enjoy teaching
06:59and I still do.
07:00And that's one of the most meaningful experiences
07:01that I have personally.
07:02And secondly, the thing that I enjoyed while in med school
07:04was building businesses on the side
07:06and coding and like doing website design
07:08and like launching a business
07:09and building a question bank
07:10and learning server-side scripting
07:11and like that sort of stuff.
07:13That was what really brought me joy in medical school
07:16rather than the work that I was doing itself.
07:20Equally, for the two years that I was working as a doctor,
07:22yeah, the work was fun
07:23and it was nice hanging out with work colleagues,
07:25but really the thing that was driving me there
07:27was like looking forward to coming home
07:29so that I could work on my YouTube channel
07:31or I could work on my businesses.
07:32And there was a nice quote that I came across,
07:35which is that, which was along the lines of,
07:37you know, the thing that you think about in the shower
07:40should be the thing that you do with your life.
07:41And if I think about like what the sorts of stuff
07:43I think in the shower, it's never about medicine.
07:46It is always about like my side businesses
07:48or my YouTube channel or my website
07:49or, you know, that sort of stuff.
07:51And so at the time when I was making this decision
07:52about do I wanna go straight into a medical training program
07:55this was really weighing on me,
07:56this idea that, you know, I made this decision 10 years ago
07:58to go to med school
07:59and I don't want to look back at my life
08:01kind of 30 years from now and think,
08:02damn, you know, that was like,
08:06I don't wanna regret sticking to that.
08:08And while I'm young
08:09and while I've got, you know, lots of opportunities
08:11and while my businesses are going well
08:12and the YouTube channel is going all right,
08:14it makes sense to take a step back
08:15and actually think, what do I actually want to do?
08:18Do I really wanna stick with this decision I made at age 16
08:20or do I wanna maybe switch to something else?
08:22So that was one part of it.
08:23Like I wasn't really sure if I wanna stay in medicine.
08:25The second part of it was that if I did stay in medicine
08:28I really had no idea what specialty I was gonna go into.
08:31When I started working in my second year as a doctor
08:33I did obstetrics and gynecology for four months
08:35and then because of the pandemic
08:36kind of screwed everything up.
08:38I ended up staying on obstetrics and gynecology
08:39for another four months.
08:40And when I went into it,
08:41I kind of thought that maybe obstetrics and gynecology
08:44was something that I would want to do
08:45as a specialty further down the line.
08:48But then through doing it for eight months
08:49I kind of fell out of love with it.
08:51And I realized that, okay,
08:53I've now tried this for eight months
08:54and I don't really see myself becoming an obstetrician
08:58and or a gynecologist.
08:59So at that point I had experience in cardiology,
09:02elderly care medicine, general surgery, psychiatry
09:05and obstetrics and gynecology.
09:06And I really couldn't see myself
09:07doing any of those specialties.
09:09And one thing that was in my mind is that
09:10a specialty that I enjoyed most of all in medical school
09:13other than obstetrics and gynecology was emergency medicine.
09:16Like working in the emergency department,
09:17we call it accident and emergency, A&E.
09:19The Americans call it ER, the emergency room.
09:21But I kind of liked the lifestyle
09:23and the idea of working in emergency medicine.
09:25The problem was I just didn't have any experience
09:28at all actually doing it.
09:29So right now, as I'm thinking like
09:30what specialty do I want to go into if any,
09:33like A&E, emergency medicine is at the top of the list.
09:36But it's like committing myself
09:37to a sort of seven year training program
09:39in emergency medicine
09:41without actually having any experience of emergency medicine
09:43and deciding whether I like it
09:46is a completely stupid thing to do.
09:47And so overall, that brings us to why I quit medicine.
09:50It was because logistically it made sense.
09:52B, I was intending to travel to Australia
09:55and like do some emergency medicine
09:56and started making some inquiries about,
09:58okay, how can I get a job in Australia?
10:00I had some friends who'd done that as well.
10:01And thirdly, I liked the idea of taking a step back,
10:04really assessing do I really want to do medicine at all?
10:06Maybe I want to travel the world a bit,
10:08broaden my horizons, explore stuff
10:10while I have the luxury of not really
10:12having any responsibilities,
10:13not needing to worry about money
10:15thanks to this YouTube channel.
10:16And all those factors culminated
10:17to get me to this point in August, 2020,
10:18where I was like, cool,
10:20this is my last day as a doctor
10:21and I don't intend to go back
10:22until I figured out like what I actually want to do.
10:26And that brings us to today.
10:28So here we are, it's March, 2021.
10:30I'm eight months into my unemployment away from medicine.
10:34It's been eight months
10:34since I've set foot inside a hospital.
10:36And weirdly, we're still in the middle of a pandemic
10:38where things are a little bit weird.
10:39But recently I decided that I was actually
10:41gonna go back into medicine.
10:43And I decided that there's a few reasons for this.
10:45Essentially, when I've been thinking about
10:48what do I actually want to do with my life?
10:50One exercise that I found helpful
10:53is kind of imagining 25 years from now,
10:57what do I want my life to look like?
10:59And it's really hard to imagine life 25 years from now.
11:02But if I think 25 years from now, 10 years from now,
11:0415 years from now, like sort of quite long-term,
11:07and I think what do I want my average week to look like?
11:12As I imagine this, I keep on landing on the idea
11:14of still being a doctor, but doing it part-time.
11:18Like I love the idea of doing medicine
11:20maybe two days a week, maybe three days a week,
11:22depending on how I'm feeling.
11:23And something that I've mentioned
11:24on the channel quite a lot,
11:25like through the last eight years of medical school
11:28and being a doctor, when I've become friends with doctors,
11:30I would always kind of ask them,
11:31hey, if you won the lottery,
11:33would you still do medicine for fun?
11:35And half of them say they would leave immediately
11:36and do something else.
11:37And the other half say they would still do medicine,
11:39but they would do it part-time.
11:41And in my eight years of asking that question,
11:42there is not a single person I've ever spoken to
11:44who has said, if I won the lottery,
11:46I would still continue to do medicine for fun full-time.
11:49I think it's unreasonable to ask anyone
11:51to be in that position.
11:52Like most of us, if given the choice for anything,
11:54we would, however much you enjoy something
11:56is probably not that fun
11:57if you do it like five or six days a week.
11:59And it would be much more fun
12:00if you did it three or four days a week, for example.
12:02And so when I think about what I want my life to look like,
12:05I like the idea of doing maybe medicine two days a week,
12:09maybe doing some like medical educational stuff,
12:11like teaching at a local medical school
12:13one or two days a week,
12:14and spending the rest of my time making internet videos,
12:17maybe writing some books,
12:18continuing to write on my website,
12:19doing this sort of internet entrepreneur type thing.
12:24Now, when it comes to making decisions
12:25about what we wanna do with our lives,
12:27there've been like sort of thousands of studies
12:29that have shown this,
12:30but you don't really need to study to know that.
12:32We are really, really bad at actually knowing what we want.
12:35And so right now I'm thinking that,
12:37hey, it would be cool to work in medicine
12:38two or three days a week,
12:40but I've never actually tried working in medicine
12:41two or three days a week.
12:42So I'll never know if that's really what I want
12:45until I try it.
12:46I've tried working in medicine five or six days a week,
12:48and I know that that's not what I want.
12:50And so there's a big part of me that thinks,
12:51okay, if my vision for the future
12:53is to do medicine two or three days a week,
12:55I should at least test that assumption
12:57to see if it's what I really want to do.
12:59This is something that Tim Ferriss talks about a lot
13:01in the four hour work week.
13:03Like our default way of living life
13:05is to imagine that, okay, I just need to work really hard.
13:07And then when I'm 65, I will retire.
13:09And then when I retire,
13:10I'll be chilling on a beach and life will be good.
13:12And what he says is that,
13:14don't defer your retirement until the age of 65.
13:18Try taking a few weeks off work
13:20and going to a beach and just sitting there
13:22and like try living your retired life
13:24and see if it actually brings you happiness.
13:26See if it's what you really want.
13:28And the way that he phrases, obviously,
13:29it's like when you live that kind of life,
13:31you realise, hang on,
13:32sitting on a beach and sipping cocktails all day
13:34is actually not that fun.
13:35It gets pretty boring after a while.
13:37But if you worked for 40 years with that vision of like,
13:40hey, one day I'm gonna sit on a beach all day
13:41and do absolutely nothing,
13:42you'd get to that point and you'd be like,
13:44damn, I've wasted my whole life
13:46because this thing that I thought I wanted
13:48is not actually what I wanted
13:50and now everything is a bit weird.
13:51And so the moral of the story there
13:53and what I really take from this
13:54is that when we think we want something,
13:56we should test that assumption.
13:58And so part of the reason
13:59why I'm going back into medicine right now
14:01is because I wanna test the assumption
14:03that do I enjoy working as a doctor
14:05two or three days a week?
14:07Part two of why I wanna go back into medicine
14:09is because this,
14:11you know, I'm quite a utilitarian guy
14:14in the way that I approach like cost benefit analyses
14:16and like partly why, you know,
14:18if someone says, hey Ali, don't you feel guilty
14:20that you're not working in medicine
14:21in the middle of a pandemic?
14:22The answer to that is no, I don't feel guilty at all.
14:25And the reason I don't feel guilty at all
14:26is because objectively,
14:28my kind of marginal impact on the world
14:32is so much higher making these internet videos
14:34and being a full-time YouTuber
14:36because it just affects so many more people
14:38in so many different ways
14:39than if I was just another doctor on the front lines,
14:43just being a doctor.
14:44Like I'm not special as a doctor, right?
14:46I'm just a junior doctor.
14:47I've been doing it for two years.
14:48I have very limited experience.
14:50I think I'm all right.
14:51I think I have all right communication skills.
14:53I quite enjoy it,
14:54but there is really not much
14:56that separates me from other doctors,
14:58which is kind of how medicine is supposed to work.
15:01Medicine is not supposed to rely on individuals
15:04standing out and being particularly amazing.
15:06The system is supposed to be such that
15:09you can put anyone who is sufficiently qualified
15:11into the system.
15:12And because of the evidence-based processes
15:15and the guidelines and everything like that,
15:18the system will deliver a good outcome for the patient
15:20rather than individuals going above and beyond
15:23and delivering a good outcome for the patient.
15:24And this is how a lot of successful businesses
15:26are made as well.
15:27Like McDonald's is a perfect example.
15:29Yes, I am drawing a comparison between McDonald's
15:31and the healthcare system,
15:32because the point is it's really all about the system.
15:36The nice thing about McDonald's
15:38is that you get exactly the same experience,
15:39whichever McDonald's you go to anywhere in the country
15:42or anywhere in the world,
15:43because their system is so tight and so well-tuned
15:46that you can put basically anyone
15:48with a small amount of training and a McDonald's uniform,
15:50you can put them into the system
15:52and they will deliver a consistent result.
15:54And that's kind of what medicine should be as well.
15:56Obviously, there is an element
15:58of being nice to the patients and taking care and stuff,
16:00but really the system is what gives the results
16:03rather than individuals.
16:04And so if we do a utilitarian analysis
16:07of Ali being a doctor versus Ali not being a doctor,
16:09Ali being a doctor is,
16:11I slot into an existing well-oiled machine,
16:14I'm yet another cog in that machine.
16:16There's really nothing special about me as a doctor.
16:18I'm just as good or just as bad as any other doctor
16:20of my experience level.
16:22And so I contribute very, very slightly
16:24to being a cog in this big machine,
16:26but ultimately it's the machine
16:27that gives the patient the results.
16:29There's also an element of,
16:30if I am not the cog in that machine,
16:32someone else will be the cog in that machine.
16:35Like, especially in the hospitals that I am,
16:37there is occasionally a shortage of doctors,
16:38but it's not like particularly dramatic.
16:40It's not so dramatic that one extra doctor
16:43working part-time in the system
16:45is actually gonna make any difference.
16:46And the way the system is designed,
16:47it means that gaps do get filled by extra shifts
16:51or locums or things like that.
16:53So in the Ali being a doctor road,
16:55my marginal impact is very, very, very tiny
16:57as just being a doctor on the front lines.
16:59But in the scenario of Ali not being a doctor,
17:01my marginal impact, thanks to this YouTube channel
17:03and the other stuff I do, is pretty high
17:05because if I wasn't doing these YouTube videos,
17:07it's not like someone else would just take up my place
17:10and start doing these YouTube videos.
17:11And I'm not trying to compare the impact
17:12of making silly internet videos
17:14with the impact of actually saving lives as a doctor,
17:17but I mean, if it comes down to it,
17:19it's like people have done analyses
17:22that on average in the Western world,
17:24a doctor will save about eight lives
17:27throughout the course of their entire career.
17:28If you go by estimates from the website GiveWell,
17:30which is a charity-like sort of analysis platform,
17:35donating to the Against Malaria Foundation,
17:37if I were to donate $3,000
17:39to the Against Malaria Foundation,
17:40that would on average save one life.
17:43And so if I donate $24,000
17:45to the Against Malaria Foundation,
17:46I'm saving eight lives.
17:48If I were to be a doctor my whole career,
17:50I'm saving eight lives.
17:51So just with that analysis alone,
17:53if I can make more money off of YouTube,
17:54and because I've taken the Giving What We Can pledge,
17:56which is where I give 10% of my income
17:58every year to charity,
17:59I actually save more lives
18:01by making money on the internet
18:02and giving that money to charity
18:04than I do by working full-time
18:05as a doctor for the rest of my life.
18:07That's one aspect of it.
18:07The other aspect of it is like,
18:09you know, making videos like this,
18:10it's very hard to,
18:13it's hard to quantify the impact of them.
18:15But if the messages and emails and stuff
18:17is it or anything to go by,
18:18people email me saying that,
18:21you know, thanks to your videos,
18:23I learned how to study for my exams
18:24and now I've gone into med school
18:25and, you know, I wouldn't have done it without this.
18:27There's a lot more kind of marginal impact
18:30that I have making videos on the internet
18:32than I do as a cog in a machine.
18:33So that is why I've never really felt guilty
18:36about not working in a pandemic.
18:38But having said all of that,
18:39there is still something qualitatively different
18:43about sitting, talking to a camera
18:45and putting videos on the internet.
18:46That's fine.
18:47But like, there is something that's much nicer
18:49about in-person interaction.
18:51And this probably doesn't need to be said,
18:53but I do genuinely enjoy being a doctor.
18:55And there is something nice about talking to patients
18:57and like being able to help people
18:58and having banter with the coworkers
19:00and that whole real life community vibe of being a doctor.
19:05Even though the impact of me being a doctor
19:08is like quite small compared to my impact on the internet,
19:10there is still something there.
19:11And so that's kind of reason number two
19:13as to why I've been thinking for a while
19:15that maybe I wanna go back into medicine
19:17cause I'm not really getting
19:18that side of the human experience.
19:20Sitting here in front of my camera
19:22with a light shining in my face, making YouTube videos.
19:25And part number three of why I'm going back into medicine
19:26is that, I don't know, I feel like my own creativities,
19:31my own like life experience and stuff
19:33has been stifled in a way by just sitting in my flat
19:37for the last eight months,
19:38making videos on the internet
19:40and being on Zoom calls all day.
19:41Partly this is the pandemic to blame.
19:42And I think if it weren't for the pandemic,
19:44I would have been traveling around the world.
19:45I would have been dabbling in medicine,
19:46maybe in Australia, maybe New Zealand.
19:48You know, I would have done more stuff,
19:50but especially because of the pandemic,
19:51I feel like my whole life is getting up,
19:54being on Zoom calls all day, making a video,
19:56being on more Zoom calls,
19:57playing World of Warcraft, going to sleep
19:59and basically repeating this process
20:01for the last eight months.
20:02And there's a huge part of me that thinks that like,
20:04I don't want to be a professional influencer.
20:06Like I actually don't wanna be a full-time YouTuber.
20:09It's not the life that I imagined for myself.
20:11And I think there's something more interesting
20:13about someone who is actually working as a doctor
20:16and using insights from that experience
20:17and having that life experience
20:19and then making videos about it,
20:21rather than someone who is sort of the person
20:23that I've turned into, which is,
20:24I sit on my ass all day in front of a desk,
20:26reading stuff and browsing Twitter.
20:28And then I make videos about the stuff that I've read
20:31and the Twitter that I've browsed.
20:32Like that's just so much less interesting
20:34than actually having real firsthand experience
20:37of doing stuff, whatever that stuff is,
20:39whether it's being a doctor or a lawyer
20:40or traveling the world, just doing anything.
20:42Doing something and then talking about it
20:44is so much more interesting than reading something
20:47and then talking about it.
20:48And I feel like over the last eight months,
20:50partly thanks to the pandemic,
20:51partly thanks to this setup that I've got here in my flat,
20:53I've become the sort of person who reads stuff
20:55and then talks about it.
20:56Whereas I know I wanna be the person who does stuff
20:59and then talks about it.
21:02And so that's why I wanna go back into medicine.
21:04And in fact, in like mid-January,
21:07I had a chat with one of the emergency medicine consultants
21:10at my local hospital and I explained this to him.
21:12I would be like, look, man,
21:14I quite like the idea of doing some shifts
21:16in emergency medicine.
21:17I don't have any experience in it,
21:18but you know me and I'm reasonably legit.
21:20Can you give me a sort of part-time job?
21:23And he was like, yeah, sure, no problem.
21:24I think you're legit.
21:25Happy to invite you to do extra shifts
21:28in the emergency department if that's what you want.
21:30And so now I'm pretty much just waiting
21:32for the paperwork to be sorted.
21:34This is actually surprisingly annoying.
21:38Even though I've worked at this hospital before
21:39and they should have all my paperwork,
21:41there's still a large amount of hoops to jump through
21:43in terms of filling out forms.
21:44And right now, sort of six weeks later,
21:47my criminal records check is still being processed
21:50by the criminal records people.
21:52And I can't go back into working as a doctor
21:54until I have been cleared that I have no criminal record.
21:58And for some reason, this has just been processing
22:00since like the 1st of February
22:02and now it's like middle of March.
22:03So for the last six weeks,
22:04this criminal records check is just taking ages
22:06to come through.
22:07And so right now I'm in this position,
22:08I'm kind of in this limbo where I'm like,
22:09look, I wanna go back to work as a doctor.
22:12I wanna do it like two or three days a week,
22:14maybe even more than that initially to get more experience.
22:16I wanna see if I like it.
22:17I wanna hang out with colleagues.
22:18I wanna get vaccinated.
22:19I wanna sort of help out in the pandemic,
22:21all this sort of stuff.
22:22But my criminal record check is causing some problems.
22:26So that's kind of the position where I'm at.
22:29I left medicine thinking I was gonna travel the world
22:31and explore my horizons and figure out what I wanna do.
22:33I realized that, well, I can't explore the world
22:35and figure out what I wanna do.
22:36And so now I've decided I wanna go back into medicine
22:39and see how I feel about emergency medicine as a specialty.
22:43Is that a specialty I wanna go into in the future?
22:44Who knows?
22:45Do I like the idea of working part-time as a doctor?
22:48I think I would, but I don't know.
22:49I'm gonna test that assumption.
22:50And so here we are today, me sitting here,
22:52explaining in this video why I left medicine
22:54and why I'm going back.
22:55That's it.
22:56Like, I don't really have any moral of the story here,
22:57nothing particularly interesting about it.
22:59If you liked this video,
23:00you might like to check out this video over here,
23:02which talks about how I feel like I've wasted
23:03the last six months of my life working on my book.
23:06That's another kind of rambly,
23:07kind of sharing my feelings and stuff type video,
23:10similar to this one.
23:11Thank you so much for watching.
23:12Have a great evening,
23:13and I'll see you hopefully in the next video.
23:15Bye-bye.