• Question: What A levels do you think I should be taking if I want to pursue in a job in the medical route?

    Asked by tescoman1 to Joel, Kristian, Tim, Venus, Zachary on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Kristian Harder

      Kristian Harder answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      I didn’t go to school in the UK and thus am not sure what exactly your options are, but I’lkl hazard a few guesses.

      Biology would probably be a good thing to do.

      Latin, if that is being taught in your school, might be useful too. Medical students have to work with Latin names for body parts a lot. In fact so much, that even living next door to a medical student during my university years means I can still recite names of a few muscles and bones in Latin. 🙂

      Other than that, what I’d really recommend is MATHEMATICS! You wonder why? Well, let me write up an actual conversation I had with a medical doctor while my wife was pregnant with our first child.

      doctor: please sit down, I have bad news for you following the examination.
      we: sitting down, looking really worried.
      doctor: we found that your unborn child has increased chance of a serious birth defect. (handing us sheet of paper with numbers)
      wife: starting to cry
      myself: being very worried. looking at sheet of paper. sheet of paper saying something like “average level of this chemical corresponds to 1/350 chance of having this birth defect. your result corresponds to 1/300 chance of having the birth defect.)
      myself: wait, doctor, arent’ you saying that we have a 299/300 or 99.7% chance of having a healthy baby?
      doctor: uh?
      myself: and you are selling this as bad news?
      doctor: uh?
      myself: how precise are these numbers anyway?
      doctor: uh?

      So, please, if you go into medicine, do better than that. 🙂
      It took me many weeks to calm down my wife, because after all the doctor said it’s bad news, and he’s the doctor. I only have a PhD in physics. 🙂

    • Photo: Tim Hollowood

      Tim Hollowood answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      Probably a physicist isn’t the right person to ask….but probably the 3 sciences plus maths.

    • Photo: Zachary Williamson

      Zachary Williamson answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      Well, a Biology A-level seems rather necessary. I’d also probably take Chemistry, as understanding how different drugs chemically interact with the human body will be a big part of your degree. I’d round it off with Maths. Not strictly necessary, but going into a medical degree with a solid knowledge of statistics will be of great help to you. The quality of medical statistics is absolutely abominable, and great efforts are being made to change that. So starting with some stats knowledge, whilst a bit boring, will likely give you an advantage.

    • Photo: Joel Goldstein

      Joel Goldstein answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      I think that medical schools normally only insist on chemistry, but do check. Having taught medical students, I would strongly recommend maths as one of your other A-levels.

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