Brighton and Sussex Medical School

When applying to medical school, it is important to demonstrate that you have an understanding of what it means to work in medicine, which is normally achieved through undertaking work experience. This is normally a temporary or long-term placement or employment in a healthcare setting, such as a community surgery or a hospital ward. The purpose of work experience is to provide individual insight into the roles of healthcare professionals, the structure and function of healthcare services and teams, and the wider issues surrounding medical practice and the NHS. This allows potential medical school applicants more informed decisions about whether they want to apply to study medicine or not. Importantly, work experience gives applicants an opportunity to assess themselves and see if they have the skills and qualities that make them suited for a career as a doctor.

Just doing work experience is not enough; the best applicants to medical school are not the ones with the largest amounts of work experience to describe. Using these experiences to best support your application requires to critically analyse them in a process called reflection.

Relevant work experience does not just include that undertaken in a healthcare environment; experience in other areas can be just as appropriate and valuable. For example, working in a nursery or in customer service can help you demonstrate that you have some of the important skills or qualities that would help you succeed as a doctor.

The aim of this work experience course is to provide you with insights into six different medical specialities, whilst highlighting both the key skills required to work within those areas, as well as some of the challenges faced.

This course is not designed to completely replace experience completed in the real world, but to provide an insight into medicine and being a doctor. The content explored may supplement work experience already achieved and/or allow you to build knowledge in areas of medicine you may have not had access to. As such, this virtual work experience tool will hopefully help you make an informed decision of whether applying to medical school is right for you.

The content is delivered through presentations, videos, quizzes and interactivity activities.

You can take as few or as many hours as you like to complete the course. There is no deadline! As a guide, it may take between 7-9 hours to complete.

After submitting both pre- and post-course surveys as well as a reflective piece of work, you will be awarded a certificate of completion. The real value of the course, however, is your reflection on the information presented - thinking about what you have learnt about medicine and how you might link the skills required by doctors, to those you have demonstrated through your our own experiences. It is this reflection that medical schools are interested in hearing about! Note: As we read/watch/look at every single reflective piece, to ensure users have truly reflected on the content of the programme (and partly due to the thousands of pieces that've been submitted!) there is currently a 5-6 week turnaround time. This means you will not get your certificate as soon as you finish (see above for the true value of the course).