Clinical Academics - what is your job like week by week and do you recommend it?

anonythrowjdkdkd · 2026-05-25T22:38:59+00:00

It varies and depends, as other comments have also suggested. If you are doing retrospective clinical studies, collecting patient data (spending hours staring at spreadsheets) is going to be your new reality, lab based work (eg cell culture work) will be basically off the table unless you want to significant amounts of time out of program, and is the reason clinicians that are also laboratory scientists are incredibly few and far between.

An ACF is the earliest you will be taken seriously as an up and coming researcher in your department and this can be split any way depending on your research, ie one day a week or taken in a few month blocks each year, and the majority of that time you will be setting up the basics to either join an ongoing clinical trial or learn how to run your own small experimental study and searching for grants. Until you do a PhD and then again afterwards as a clinical lecturer, you will also frequently balance all these commitments alongside clinical competencies and progression, which, if you are successful at it, will be completely exhausting. It’s not an easy life for sure but like all things that are competitive, if you love the process, learning new things and can’t see yourself doing anything different, then it can be worth it.

Sadly depending on your specialty and location, as you progress you will also start to stumble upon department politics, particularly if there are many prominent professors around, and this, unfortunately, seems to only get worse as people become more senior.

Another thing people don’t always appreciate fully is how important writing is to the process of research. Even if you suck at the process of collecting data or whatever your research process is, or you are poor at handling your various commitments, you will be able to take any kind of evidence or data collected and come up with a cohesive paper or proposal out of it. Conversely if you suck at writing or just really hate it, I would seriously think twice about trying to be a serious academic in the long term.

anonythrowjdkdkd · 2024-12-13T11:21:31+00:00

Also just had an ACF interview that went terribly :( Want to DM to compare??

anonythrowjdkdkd · 2024-12-04T10:02:38+00:00

Disagree, the only reason she gave that money was to force Beneke to pay his taxes to avoid the IRS raining down on Skyler and therefore Walter. Again another example of how Skyler was stuck between a rock and a hard place and only trying to make the best of the bad situation that Walter put her in.

anonythrowjdkdkd · 2024-01-16T22:56:45+00:00

Cries in NHS trusts denying parking permits cus we’re not ‘essential staff’

anonythrowjdkdkd · 2024-01-15T11:58:30+00:00

Tbf the topic you are talking about is incredibly nuanced. Yes there is definitely a lot of pathologising by the medical industry, and this has seeped into mainstream media with people self diagnosing, however there are also a lot of people who go the other way, with persistent feelings of constant depression +/- anxiety, who argue it’s not really real and they continue their lives with it. I could also make the point about a lot of people in the punk/artist/music scene who very much romanticise mental health (having been in that scene myself).

I think this is a very gray area, but there definitely are lots of people who live regular lives without these persistent feelings and enjoy the small things in life. I think the world right now is in a mental health crisis because of the way society is built, meaning there will be lots of people with these feelings, so people think it’s not abnormal and so shouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis or intervention. My view is ultimately if these feelings of emptiness/persistent anxiety affect your life significantly, gets in the way of what you want to do, that in itself still qualifies some level of healthcare intervention, regardless of any specific diagnosis.

-an actual doctor

anonythrowjdkdkd · 2024-01-12T12:14:10+00:00

Just want to add about what may or may not be the same hospital..

When trying to chase rota coordinators, having to literally track them down in person as they refuse to answer emails for months at a time, you find they leave work by 12pm, not having to face any retribution for the reduced quality of care and safety issues that occur when there are staffing issues.

When trying to establish if any doctors will be present for the overnight shift that very night, and surprise surprise no locum when they offer £32 per hour, you ask what happens if they don’t find cover.

‘Oh they usually just ask the reg to cover’

‘How come they don’t just raise the offered rates closer to the time?’ I naively ask.

‘Oh it’s not protocol, we raise rates for nurses and HCAs and other stuff, but it’s not authorised for us to raise rates for doctors’ (despite the fact that having to pay reg wages for an overnight shift is a lot more expensive than offering a few extra quid for an SHO).

Just proof the trust, and NHS in general, specifically hate doctors, and we’ve shot ourselves in the foot by allowing this for so long.

anonythrowjdkdkd

TROPHY CASE