Meet one of Britain’s youngest doctors
One of the 6,500 junior doctors who started work this August is Faye Hill. Faye, who was 21 when she graduated from medical school, is one of the youngest doctors in the country.
Dr Hill started her medical degree at Manchester University when she was just 17 and has just started work as an F1 doctor at the Royal Preston Hospital in Lancashire. Her first rotation will be in urology, but Faye hopes to specialise in paediatrics later in her career.
Faye says: “I really enjoyed my time at medical school, despite the fact I was a bit younger than my fellow students. The course was very demanding, particularly the first two years which were very academic and mainly based in the university.
“I really started to enjoy the course from the third year onwards, when we were taking part in more clinical work in a hospital setting. This gave me a real insight into why I was studying medicine that you can’t get from just reading books.”
Faye was inspired to study medicine by her mother who was a vet. However, Faye wanted to practice medicine on people rather than animals. Faye explains why she enjoys her job so much:
“Every day is different and brings new challenges. Even if you’re carrying out the same procedure or examination, it will be on different patients with different symptoms and needs. For the patients, their treatment is obviously a really important experience and this makes even routine tasks unique for me as their doctor.”
Describing her typical day at the Royal Preston Hospital, Faye says: “There are ward rounds in the mornings where the clinical team assesses the patients. As a junior doctor, I go along and assist with the clerical side while the senior doctors take the decisions. The rest of the morning is spent carrying out the jobs from the ward rounds - for example checking fluids, administering drugs, and fitting cannulas.
“In the afternoon, we often have pre-op clinics where we give patients a general health check a few days before they’re to have surgery. We also carry an on-call bleep, so that the accident and emergency department can call us to ask for a surgical opinion and, if necessary, admit patients to the ward for further investigation.”
