Jobs for Medical Students
A typical medicine degree in the UK takes 5 years to complete. During this time, students can expect to spend between 30-40 hours studying per week, as well as class time and clinical work. Because of these long hours, most medical students will search for part-time or summer work.
Finding jobs for medical students not only allows you to make some extra money to cover costs, but it also means you can get some valuable work experience for your career in healthcare. That being said, your studies should always take priority over a job.
Types of Jobs for Medical Students
There are a variety of jobs for medical students available. Some jobs are related to your degree while others are not related. We’ll take a look at both types.
Jobs Related to Your Medical Degree
Let’s begin by looking at jobs that are connected to your medical degree. Not only do you get experience in your potential future career field, but a job that’s related to your degree allows you to begin networking at an early stage.
Healthcare Assistant
As a healthcare assistant, you’ll gain valuable experience for your future. Your job will be to ensure that patients have the best and most comfortable experience during their hospital stay. Working under the guidance of a healthcare professional, you’ll carry out tasks such as washing and dressing patients, changing beds, and serving food and drinks to patients. Additionally, you will be responsible for monitoring patient temperature, blood pressure, and weight, making sure that patients are comfortable and stress-free.
In this role, you’ll learn valuable soft skills like communicating with patients and listening to their needs, as well as organisational and observational skills.
You can apply for temporary vacancies through the NHS Professionals website.
Hospital Laboratory Work
Hospital laboratory workers are part of the life sciences field. They work in hospital laboratories in areas from disease diagnosis and treatment to helping couples with IVF. There are 3 main types of life sciences work: pathology, genetics, and reproductive science.
In this role, you’ll gain valuable experience in a laboratory setting as well as a deeper understanding of how we can improve human health.
Jobs Unrelated to Your Medical Degree
With a medicine degree taking up so much of your time and energy, it’s no surprise that many medical students would prefer to take on a job that’s unrelated to their degree. However, you’ll have many transferable skills from your degree that will help you in most other fields of work.
Here are some of the best jobs for medical students that aren’t related to medicine:
Event Worker
Event workers assist in the logistics of corporate and public events. You’ll help set up venues, work as ushers, operate cash registers, and serve drinks. It’s important to have good interpersonal skills and be able to adapt to the different types of work environments.
One major advantage of event work is that you can often pick and choose the events you’re available for. There’s also a boost in events during the summertime which coincides with your university holidays.
Shop Work
Many shops need to take on part-time and summer staff to cover the increase in customers during weekends and the summer period. Your job will involve tasks such as making sure customers have a positive shopping experience, ensuring the store is well-stocked and organised, and working the cash register.
Shop work allows you to concentrate on your studies when you need to but also earn extra money when you have time off.
Finding Jobs for Medical Students
As a medical student, you’ll develop a wide variety of transferable skills during your studies. These will set you apart from the rest when applying for jobs so it’s important to know how to emphasise them. There’s no shortage of jobs for med students out there. Remember to keep an eye on our live job board for jobs for medical students in your area.
