Work experience for medicine

How much do you need?

There's no set number of hours, and more isn't always better. A short placement you can talk about thoughtfully beats months you can't describe. Requirements vary between medical schools, so always check each one before you apply.

Compare the 5 Scottish medical schools.

What counts as work experience for your medical school application?

You can build the communication and care skills you need through lots of different activities. From paid weekend jobs to volunteering, here's what admissions teams look for.

Health and care settings

Shadowing or volunteering in a hospital, clinic, or care home is great. It lets you see how teams work, how staff talk to patients, and what the job looks like on an ordinary day.

Paid work

A part-time job counts as excellent experience. Serving customers during a difficult shift, handling complaints, and working with a team under pressure all build communication and resilience. Medical schools know that many applicants need to work, so paid employment isn't a lesser form of experience.

Volunteering

Volunteering builds the same skills, whether it's in healthcare or not. Befriending, youth work, coaching, and charity shops all involve working with a diverse range of people.

You can find volunteering opportunities with the following organisations:

• Volunteer Scotland
• Volunteering Matters
• Volunteer with an NHS Scotland Heath Board
• Your local authority website

Caring responsibilities

If you look after a family member, friend, or neighbour, you already have experience of illness, disability, or ageing. Medical schools recognise this, and you can write about it in your application. You're also likely to meet widening access criteria as a young carer, which can mean an adjusted offer.

Check if you qualify.

Virtual work experience

You’ll find free programmes online, so they can be done from anywhere. They are useful if in-person placements are hard to find locally:

• Observe GP (from the Royal College of General Practitioners)
• NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde virtual ward rounds
• Brighton and Sussex Medical School virtual work experience
• You Can Be A Doctor

Foundation Apprenticeships

If you're still at school, a Foundation Apprenticeship in Social Services and Healthcare is very structured. You'll spend part of your week at college and part of it on a real work placement. You're assessed as you go rather than by a final exam, and you may need a PVG scheme check before starting.

There are 2 things to remember before you choose this route:

• Take it in S6, not S5: Standard entry medicine needs 5 Highers achieved in a single S5 sitting. Taking an apprenticeship in S5 displaces one of your required subjects.
• It doesn't replace required Highers: It gives you an SCQF Level 6 qualification and relevant experience, but you still need your core science subjects and grades.

Availability varies across the country. Places are limited, and not every school offers every subject. Ask your guidance teacher what's available and apply early, as applications usually open in the spring.

How to arrange a placement

Your local NHS Scotland health board might run a work experience programme, so check their website first. Beyond that, you can contact general medical practices, care homes, and community organisations directly. A short email explaining who you are and what you're hoping to learn works much better than a general enquiry.

Expect some places to say no, or to have nothing available right now. If you're struggling, your local Reach programme or a student-led outreach group can often help.

What actually matters: reflection

This is the part applicants can sometimes underestimate. Medical schools aren't interested in a simple list of what you did. They want to know what you noticed, what you found difficult, and what it told you about the job.

Saying “I shadowed a general practitioner for a week” tells them almost nothing. However, saying “I watched a general practitioner explain a diagnosis 3 different ways until the patient understood” shows real insight.

Write things down while they're fresh. A few lines after each session will be far more useful in 6 months than trying to remember it all later. The University of Edinburgh Reflection Toolkit is a free guide to doing this well.

Keeping up with medicine

Understanding the profession helps show you've made an informed choice. Reading medical journals will help you to stay informed, but you don't need to read hundreds of them. It's better to pick a few articles that interest you and focus on understanding the main pressures on healthcare in Scotland.

Try to read up on things like:

• waiting times
• health and care for an ageing population
• health inequalities
• artificial intelligence
• NHS Scotland’s net zero ambitions. 

Being able to discuss one of these thoughtfully is worth more than briefly mentioning all of them.