Do you thrive in situations where you can interact with and help people? Are you interested in maintaining and restoring people’s health through the practice of medicine? You may want to consider a career as a doctor!
There is a specific type of doctor for almost every major system located in the human body. Regardless of specialty, doctors face the challenge of diagnosing and treating human disease, ailments, injuries, pain, or other conditions. This is done by listening to the patient, understanding the problem, and then using their scientific expertise to know how best to treat the ailment or concern.
What a doctor does will differ depending on the kind of medicine they practice. There are typically three categories of doctors:
Doctors That Work in Hospitals
Approximately half of doctors work in a hospital setting, either as a surgeon or as a specialized doctor. There are many medical specialties to choose from — at least thirty — and within these specialties, there are many sub-specialties. Please see below under What Are a Few Medical Specialties One Can Consider? for more details. For example, a medical student can choose to become a neurosurgeon and then within this become a sub-specialist in pediatric neurosurgery.
Doctors That Work Within a Community
The other half or so of medical students will end up becoming general practitioners, seeing patients of all ages within a particular community. They are the frontline and first point of contact in a patient’s health care. They diagnose and treat their patients for all sorts of ailments, and also refer their patients to the appropriate specialist doctor when needed for specific medical opinions and advice. There are other types of doctors who can also work within a community, such as those who work in paediatrics, obstetrics, and sexual health.
Others
There are medical students who prefer to take a different path and pursue a career in academia. This involves doing research as well as teaching other students and medical professionals. Other students may use their medical degree to delve very deeply into research-based careers in a particular field that interests them — breast cancer, neurological disorders, or environmental pathology are examples.
Doctors can be found in several settings. Some start working at an existing practice while others open their own practice. Large hospitals are always eager to take on new staff members. It is believed that a lot depends on personal preference as the environment in each place will be different (i.e. a government hospital vs. a private hospital).
A doctor typically works very long hours and has to be available for emergencies. These hours are spent seeing patients in an office-based setting, running tests as well as interpreting them, prescribing medicine or treatments, doing rounds in the hospital, making notes on patient’s physical conditions, advising patients on how to stay healthy and talking to them about further treatment. They keep up to date by taking classes and regularly reading books and medical journals.
A doctor that also performs surgeries will usually work two or three full days in the office and then two or three days in the hospital operating room performing surgeries. Doctors will also invest time completing administrative duties such as updating patient records, returning phone calls, or dealing with various office issues.
Salaries of doctors vary based on their areas of specialization and job grades in Kenya. For example, In 2017, the proposed salary for intern doctors who are in Job Group C3-8 was a minimum of KSH62,000. Chief medical specialists in Job Group E3-9 were to earn a minimum of KSH221,000 minus allowances.
The demand for doctors is robust considering population growth, particularly among the elderly; widespread availability of both public and private medical insurance; and increased needs for medical research, public health, rehabilitation, and industrial medicine. Also, new technologies will allow doctors to perform more procedures to treat ailments previously deemed incurable. Significant employment opportunities are expected to be available for family practitioners, internists, geriatricians, preventative care specialists, and pediatricians. Employment prospects should also be good for doctors that specialize in dealing with health issues that largely affect aging baby boomers. For example, there will be a demand for doctors specializing in cardiology or radiology since the risks for heart disease and cancer increase as people age. As delivery of health care shifts from hospitals to clinics and outpatient centres, it is possible that a greater number of doctors will become salaried employees. Competition among newly trained doctors will be very high in large cities. Doctors willing to enter practice in inner cities and rural areas are likely to encounter little difficulty.
To secure a direct government admission to university for this career, you must have an average grade of a plain A and for self-sponsored a B+ and above. You will pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) from a recognized university which takes six years. It’s during this time that you will specialize in the area of interest.
