Hrmm they sent us that email the day we found out we passed first year med. They can sponsor the last 4 years of a med degree, providing you give the number of years + 1 service to the Defence Force chosen... (This is with their Undergraduate Scheme btw)
But not everyone wants to work for the Defence Force, and even after that, not everyone is Officer material...
Anyway, back to this thread: the person who 'knows all these important people' (bearpooh) is slightly misled. Sure, some doctors want to change careers. But I'd rather want to be a doctor wanting to change careers than a cab driver wanting to change careers. Its bound to happen that no matter what career you choose, there will always be some people doing the job that don't like it.
Then there will be those that really love it. Like the taxi driver who brought us home pissed in sydney that was saying he loves his job as it lets him have multiple affairs with his wife.
Or those doctors that do drive Porches and Maseratis and other expensive cars, and live in multi million waterfront houses that they own.
Or the doctors that simply love their work (and in the first year, i've come into contact with more of these than the ones that really want to change jobs). Even the doctors that you speak to and they say they hate their job and want to change, say so out of cynicism for some aspect of their career (though not all of it), but when you ask what they'd do if they had their time over, they still say they'd do Medicine.
I want to drive an expensive car, and I want to live in a nice house. But I dont want to sacrifice what I do as a career to simply get these things. I could make $2.5K a week on web design for a while, pulling that $10K job every so often, but i'd get damn sick of it damn quickly.
And it would mean doing what I personally think would be a shit boring degree with a crappy employment opportunity when you come out.
Medicine is all the things that you guys who want to do it for the right reasons think it is, if you work hard enough (which I could have done a bit better) and stay positive, and get off your arse and go and see other things rather than just the degree. Do some additional work experience 'after' you get in (after/during your first year), go to the country for a while (you have to anyway these days), if your a city person apply for John Flynn, keep talking to people, blah blah...
Let me disect your post from my opinion poo-person:
>>I know a number of doctors very well. Most would change careers if they could.
You don't know enough. Or the ones that you know were the ones who went into med 'wanting' or 'expecting' that fortune.
>>There is very little prestige left in it.
Think of prestige as not what you get out of it, like the money, or the power, or the status, but the way you can benefit OTHERS rather than yourself. Then you will start to see how 'prestigous' an industry it is. How it does help people as a whole. Depending on what field of medicine you go into, your status is going to go from 'wow-i-sit-in-a-lab-all-day' to 'these-people-love-me-and-what-i-do-for-them'.
>>The money sucks.
The money does not suck.
Today's SMH has a starting salary for doctors which is well above that of other fields. Look for the article.
Once again, depending on your field, you can live quite comfortably to very well.
Insurance costs are an issue, like firstly overcoming $120K per/year premiums for O&G
>>Medical research in Oz is so backward that it is not funny. The brighter ones
>>head off to the US . Someone I knew very well is now Prof of Oncology in Cambridge.
Don't think so. You've only got to do some MedLine or PubMed searches to find many of the damn interesting and useful stuff done in australia.
I don't know a lot about this as yet however.
>>However having a medical degree does make it a lot easier to get funding for research.
I'd say bull to that however. It seems illogical. But depends on the type of research I guess.
>>Additionally. entry into medicine is non-transparent and non-UAI in an effort to keep out >>the Asian students who do well.
Despite what you think, there is no conspiracy that is actively preventing people of any culture or whatever getting into med. UAI does apply. As does UMAT/GAMSAT.
There is a large proportion of asian students in my year. So what.
>>A medical examiner ( ie: he takes med students for vivas ) attached to
>>sydney uni told me a few years ago that there are too many "Ngs and Ngo's"
>>getting into medicine.
>>The interview based entry is one way of fixing this "problem"
This is not a problem. You sound like a racist tool. Ever thought maybe these people make good doctors?
Anyway, I've had it with bitching for a while, going to the skate park. Bitch back all you want.
Anyone that actually has _questions_ to ask however, ask away. PM me, whatever. Skywalker is another person to contact.
Cheers,
Michael.
