I am a final year medical student and I am highly passionate about public health as a career, however, I would also like to pursue a clinical career in Ob/gyn. I was thinking I could pursue a masters degree relevant to public health and then try to specialize in Ob/gyn. I have been told not to go down to roads and to stick to only one. Is it possible to do both in the UK?
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What do you want your scope of work to be?
A clinical consultant can shift their career and go for medical education, public health, administration etc. whichever pathway they want to pursue.
Professor Chris Witty, CMO and Head of NIHR (basically the top public health guy in the UK) is a renal medicine consultant by training (iirc).
So, you see you can have clinical and then public health if you can gain the required competencies and is passionate about it.
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Thank you Ibrahim, your reply is much appreciated! I was wondering if it is feasible to be actually working in both arenas? Not just attaining the degrees and completing the training, but actually working in both clinical and non clinical jobs? I have hear Ibreez mention previously in a video say it is possible to do a locum if your time permits and to stuff in family time or study time in between your clinical career, but can I actually stuff a career of a different nature?
Yes, in theory, you can.
But in practice, I do not think there are blended jobs like that. If you build a public health career alongside your OBGYN career at some point you will have to choose what you want your job focus to be. If it is public health, will you have enough time in that job to go locum as a OBGYN consultant? No one can say for certain.
It will depend between you and the managers/bosses in that job.
Hello, I have an strange question. Is it possible to study another career during the residency? I would like to be a psychiatrist but also a musician and I want to study music formally. Will I have enough time?
Not a weird question at all. To answer your question, yes, definitely you can.
But obviously that will be your part-time education. I’ll be starting a postgraduate degree on clinical education so I don’t think it will be anything different for you to find a course you want to study in a nearby university.