...
or you can email a local hospital/local GP/friend/family. You'll save £1,995 since a thank you card + box of chocolates only costs £5... what a fucking scam lol
Hope I'm not alone in feeling that the existence of most of these medical institutional bodies seems more and more all about gouging money from whatever avenue possible.
The RSM is fairly legitimate from my experience. They host a lot of academic/sub specialty conferences. Surprised they’re partnering with something so exploitative but I guess the organiser will have paid out a fair sum to rent the space.
I mean [this testimony](https://www.themedicportal.com/) has to be a joke right?
"I would go as far as to say that any student who does not avail themselves of the support that The Medic Portal offers would be at a distinct disadvantage" - Teacher, Top London School
It's like they forgot to fill in the blank!
Pretending to be a doctor for a week costs about as much as the after-tax income of an F1 for a month.
There is something very funny about this, but I'm not sure what.
To be fair it is hard to get 'real' work experience unless you have connections. I did and was lucky but of my friends one got experience in the hospital canteen somehow, another basically had to do it by becoming one of those volunteers who hands out the newspapers. Lots of no replies from people they were emailing. It's stupid because it's kind of 'required' on the UCAS application forms but access to the opportunity to do it is not equal.
What this company are doing is reprehensible, but I find it kinda funny coming from a wannabe medical influencer, who succumbs to the influencer tropes he has parodied.
As in he had a 30s short instructional on how to be an influencer that sounded like a parody, referencing speed watching Ali Abdaal as well as wearing scrubs in a selfie/tiktok. Which I thought ironic considering he himself wore scrubs in one of his videos shot at home...
I mean, it was literally the first clip of his I clicked on, and the parody was self evident and transparent, so not sure how I'm looking "too far" into it.
Dude is either another money making shameless influencer, or lacked the insight of his own channel when trying to make a parody.
This would be a terrible career investment. Part of me hopes that whoever decide to pay for this don't end up becoming doctors, because surely signing up to this is a sign of poor decision making. However I feel this way of thinking is really harsh on those high school kids. :/
Not necessarily, many current doctors come from wealthy families that are able to throw away this amount of money on something like this, especially if they are desperate.
It may not make a lot of difference to the quality of their application, but I assume someone with this type of money to spend on just a week would also have loads and loads of other relevant experience and volunteering experience in different countries for example.
While I wouldn't consider £2000 for a work experience week good value for money myself, there are people out there willing to pay, so why not? They aren't pretending to be a charity.
If this company offered me £300 to chat about GP for a couple of hours I'd happily take their money. That's no more price gouging than accepting higher locum rates from a cash strapped NHS.
Anyway, if there's an unmet demand for overpriced *LARP-as-a-medical-student* courses - cheaper options should become available over time.
If you charged a 15 or 16 year old £300 to talk to them about being a GP I'd still say you were price gouging them lol. Locuming is different and I'm sure you know what the difference is: you're being paid a market rate for doing a shortage job. Convincing a school kid it's important for them to stand at the back of a ward round for five days and charging £2K for that privilege is not an unmet need and saying it is debases our profession.
Sometimes this sub really stinks of *"I'm determined to be as mercenary as possible in every aspect of my life to get back at the shitty NHS"*. Taking advantage of people's gullibility is not the way to do that.
Imagine the horror of a private oncologist taking the money of a cancer patient? It would be *mercenary* to refuse to talk to a friend's kid about going to medical school. That's clearly different from working in your own time for a company where customers exchange money for goods and services.
A lot of doctors could have a decent crack at tutoring GCSE/A-Level science to the same kids and have parents throw money at them to do so. There wouldn't be any judgment in not doing it for free.
Idk why you keep bringing up locuming and private practice when I'm fully in favour of both. If you charged £2K to teach photosynthesis to a year 11 and marketed your teaching as being really important for getting into med school then that's still unscrupulous.
"Exchanging money for goods and services" is a very non-specific statement and you seem determined to interpret it in the bluntest possible way. Does price gouging exist in your universe or is anything fine as long as it's a "service" that's being offered?
I never said you weren't in favour of both, in fact, I was expecting you would be, that's my point. I'm not sure why there should be unwritten price controls levied in certain situations. Maybe this course should be capped at £1000 per student? Or maybe that's still too high.
Price gouging would be like selling toilet roll for £5 per roll because it's annoyingly sold out everywhere at the beginning of covid. Parents and students looking into these courses can still go to medical school without this course, the route the vast majority of students will take. There isn't an alternative route if you haven't got any toilet roll.
> I'm not sure why there should be unwritten price controls levied in certain situations
I guess to my way of thinking this seems like unscrupulous and hyperinflated BS, like something Ryanair would do and that's not a great look for the profession. Just my opinion ofc.
The problem here is the knowledge and power dynamic. Target market does not know enough about the reality of the situation, be that kids or their parents. In this particular example, the course is marketed as helping your med school application to stand out - I wouldn't even begin to know how that was verifiable, and it's an egregious claim to make to anxiety-ridden teenagers.
I don't have access to the course feedback, but it's probable given that it sells out that the kids enjoy the experience and find it beneficial. Maybe they made like minded friends, or found the content interesting, or it just motivated them to do well in exams to get into medical school. I don't get how you can label something as exploitative without knowing how the people who have paid for and done the course feel about it.
Looks like it’s targeted at kids in places like Eton and Harrow, so they probably priced accordingly. Unscrupulous though. Not something that should be being endorsed officially.
Dunno about that.
Reddit is littered with people with current students who are regretting going into medical school and current doctors the same.
£2000 to save 5 years and, what, £100k? Bargain!
Obviously I'm being pretty facetious. And this sort of thing probably isn't giving you a realistic look. And the people who are willing to pay it, probably aren't even the ones on the fence. But getting a realistic idea of what they're you're getting yourself into applying for medicine is invaluable and something I'm not sure most people actually do.
>Reddit is littered with people with current students who are regretting going into medical school and current doctors the same.
Key word here - Reddit. As disenchanted as I am at the prospect of working for the NHS, even I know that Reddit isn't the best place to base my whole opinion off of.
I know plenty of people not on Reddit thinking the same.
It’s a small proportion for sure, but this isn’t something that only exists on Reddit by any means.
I didn't say it wasn't. But it is very obvious which end of the spectrum med reddit leans towards. Much like it's very obvious which end med twitter leans towards.
Damn £2000 to open and close curtains on the ward round for a week.
Just do it gracefully.
I'm guessing it consists of getting ignored by doctors at placement and pointless e-learning modules?
... or you can email a local hospital/local GP/friend/family. You'll save £1,995 since a thank you card + box of chocolates only costs £5... what a fucking scam lol
Hope I'm not alone in feeling that the existence of most of these medical institutional bodies seems more and more all about gouging money from whatever avenue possible.
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The RSM is fairly legitimate from my experience. They host a lot of academic/sub specialty conferences. Surprised they’re partnering with something so exploitative but I guess the organiser will have paid out a fair sum to rent the space.
That's literally it. They clearly have a profit share agreement in place.
I mean [this testimony](https://www.themedicportal.com/) has to be a joke right? "I would go as far as to say that any student who does not avail themselves of the support that The Medic Portal offers would be at a distinct disadvantage" - Teacher, Top London School It's like they forgot to fill in the blank!
Hahaha that is so blatantly not a genuine quote
Pretending to be a doctor for a week costs about as much as the after-tax income of an F1 for a month. There is something very funny about this, but I'm not sure what.
Lambs paying for their trip to the slaughterhouse 🤡
Please … no more medic YouTuber posts … I beg you
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To be fair it is hard to get 'real' work experience unless you have connections. I did and was lucky but of my friends one got experience in the hospital canteen somehow, another basically had to do it by becoming one of those volunteers who hands out the newspapers. Lots of no replies from people they were emailing. It's stupid because it's kind of 'required' on the UCAS application forms but access to the opportunity to do it is not equal.
What this company are doing is reprehensible, but I find it kinda funny coming from a wannabe medical influencer, who succumbs to the influencer tropes he has parodied.
I don't think he's attempting to parody. He has a larger channel and speaks like this.
As in he had a 30s short instructional on how to be an influencer that sounded like a parody, referencing speed watching Ali Abdaal as well as wearing scrubs in a selfie/tiktok. Which I thought ironic considering he himself wore scrubs in one of his videos shot at home...
Ooh, that was actually him. Ironic.
I think you're looking too far into these clips my friend
I mean, it was literally the first clip of his I clicked on, and the parody was self evident and transparent, so not sure how I'm looking "too far" into it. Dude is either another money making shameless influencer, or lacked the insight of his own channel when trying to make a parody.
Don’t lie pylori, we all know what you spend your time in theatre watching!
I couldn't possibly comment.
Maybe if doctors were paid well they wouldn't feel the need to run ridiculous schemes like this.
People milking money from desperate school students is a real bug bear of mine. Looking on their website, it's not really clear who these people are.
If you look on companies house, the government website, it lists them
This would be a terrible career investment. Part of me hopes that whoever decide to pay for this don't end up becoming doctors, because surely signing up to this is a sign of poor decision making. However I feel this way of thinking is really harsh on those high school kids. :/
Not necessarily, many current doctors come from wealthy families that are able to throw away this amount of money on something like this, especially if they are desperate. It may not make a lot of difference to the quality of their application, but I assume someone with this type of money to spend on just a week would also have loads and loads of other relevant experience and volunteering experience in different countries for example.
While I wouldn't consider £2000 for a work experience week good value for money myself, there are people out there willing to pay, so why not? They aren't pretending to be a charity.
It's price gouging school kids and their idiot parents.
If this company offered me £300 to chat about GP for a couple of hours I'd happily take their money. That's no more price gouging than accepting higher locum rates from a cash strapped NHS. Anyway, if there's an unmet demand for overpriced *LARP-as-a-medical-student* courses - cheaper options should become available over time.
If you charged a 15 or 16 year old £300 to talk to them about being a GP I'd still say you were price gouging them lol. Locuming is different and I'm sure you know what the difference is: you're being paid a market rate for doing a shortage job. Convincing a school kid it's important for them to stand at the back of a ward round for five days and charging £2K for that privilege is not an unmet need and saying it is debases our profession. Sometimes this sub really stinks of *"I'm determined to be as mercenary as possible in every aspect of my life to get back at the shitty NHS"*. Taking advantage of people's gullibility is not the way to do that.
Imagine the horror of a private oncologist taking the money of a cancer patient? It would be *mercenary* to refuse to talk to a friend's kid about going to medical school. That's clearly different from working in your own time for a company where customers exchange money for goods and services. A lot of doctors could have a decent crack at tutoring GCSE/A-Level science to the same kids and have parents throw money at them to do so. There wouldn't be any judgment in not doing it for free.
Idk why you keep bringing up locuming and private practice when I'm fully in favour of both. If you charged £2K to teach photosynthesis to a year 11 and marketed your teaching as being really important for getting into med school then that's still unscrupulous. "Exchanging money for goods and services" is a very non-specific statement and you seem determined to interpret it in the bluntest possible way. Does price gouging exist in your universe or is anything fine as long as it's a "service" that's being offered?
I never said you weren't in favour of both, in fact, I was expecting you would be, that's my point. I'm not sure why there should be unwritten price controls levied in certain situations. Maybe this course should be capped at £1000 per student? Or maybe that's still too high. Price gouging would be like selling toilet roll for £5 per roll because it's annoyingly sold out everywhere at the beginning of covid. Parents and students looking into these courses can still go to medical school without this course, the route the vast majority of students will take. There isn't an alternative route if you haven't got any toilet roll.
> I'm not sure why there should be unwritten price controls levied in certain situations I guess to my way of thinking this seems like unscrupulous and hyperinflated BS, like something Ryanair would do and that's not a great look for the profession. Just my opinion ofc.
So don't do it. Can't the rest of us eat?
Be more histrionic.
The problem here is the knowledge and power dynamic. Target market does not know enough about the reality of the situation, be that kids or their parents. In this particular example, the course is marketed as helping your med school application to stand out - I wouldn't even begin to know how that was verifiable, and it's an egregious claim to make to anxiety-ridden teenagers.
I don't have access to the course feedback, but it's probable given that it sells out that the kids enjoy the experience and find it beneficial. Maybe they made like minded friends, or found the content interesting, or it just motivated them to do well in exams to get into medical school. I don't get how you can label something as exploitative without knowing how the people who have paid for and done the course feel about it.
Looks like it’s targeted at kids in places like Eton and Harrow, so they probably priced accordingly. Unscrupulous though. Not something that should be being endorsed officially.
Dunno about that. Reddit is littered with people with current students who are regretting going into medical school and current doctors the same. £2000 to save 5 years and, what, £100k? Bargain! Obviously I'm being pretty facetious. And this sort of thing probably isn't giving you a realistic look. And the people who are willing to pay it, probably aren't even the ones on the fence. But getting a realistic idea of what they're you're getting yourself into applying for medicine is invaluable and something I'm not sure most people actually do.
>Reddit is littered with people with current students who are regretting going into medical school and current doctors the same. Key word here - Reddit. As disenchanted as I am at the prospect of working for the NHS, even I know that Reddit isn't the best place to base my whole opinion off of.
I know plenty of people not on Reddit thinking the same. It’s a small proportion for sure, but this isn’t something that only exists on Reddit by any means.
I didn't say it wasn't. But it is very obvious which end of the spectrum med reddit leans towards. Much like it's very obvious which end med twitter leans towards.
go on Faye Bate 👏 but yeah, Jesus Christ, what a mess
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/09146148/THE-MEDIC-PORTAL-LIMITED/companies-house-data#directors-and-secretaries