I recently overheard a junior doctor complaining about the new career pathway structure in the United Kingdom for trainees (Modernising Medical Careers). Apparently there are 400 plastic surgical trainees competing for only 20 training programmes. The complaint from this aggrieved young trainee was of how many of them were being “cast aside” and how few trainees were being allowed to train in their chosen field. My immediate thought on this was whether the UK actually needed that many plastic surgeons. Is there really that amount of burns and reconstructive work here? Perhaps plastic surgical trainees all want to be cosmetic surgeons? Surely not…
When, during my second year at medical school, I decided on cardiology as my career choice, one of my reasons was that …