When I use a word . . . On becoming a doctor

Abstract

A recent online article in The Times newspaper sought to advise school leavers “how to become a doctor.” Its authors would have been better advising them to consider whether they wanted to become doctors at all. I don’t pretend to be able to advise school leavers about that—it is too long since I did it myself, and even when I was doing it the whole process seemed to me akin to driving down an unfamiliar highway in a dense fog, wondering if I was ever going to arrive. My best offer is to suggest that they ask themselves a question similar to a question I was asked when pondering what specialty might suit me best as a trainee: what are their favourite academic subjects? If they are those that fit the needs of the undergraduate curriculum, they should go for it, assuming that current resident doctors don’t strongly advise them not to, for other reasons. And if they have very wide interests, spanning the sciences and humanities, then they should certainly go for it—of all careers, medicine is likely to offer them the best chance of indulging those interests and becoming expert practitioners. My mother had a twin brother who was a general practitioner in their home town of Liverpool and whom she greatly admired. She was also stage-struck and would have loved to have gone on the stage herself. So, under her tutelage, I was destined to be either a doctor or an actor. In fact, I became both. As a young boy growing up in Glasgow, I was sent to what was known locally as the Athenaeum, the equivalent of London’s RADA, where I learnt everything about how to tread the boards, which I did both at school and later on with amateur companies. We played everything from …