Hello, Buthaina here! I’m a Foundation Doctor working in the Northwest Deanery. I am from Oman, and studied Medicine on the St Andrews/ Manchester route.
As a recent medical school graduate and now an FY1 doctor, I can’t help but laugh-cry at my undergraduate experience. I look back and can somehow only think of the good times, never the stress of w ork and exams. Still, there were a few years of uncertainty in the middle of it all, where the world stopped, turned upside down and shook us all up, in that order.
My time in the UK in the COVID-19 era was mostly made up of waiting for the travel update every 3 weeks, refreshing my twitter feed manically, reading travel expert prediction articles, studying COVID statistics and vaccination rates like my life depended on it. And every 3 weeks, I watched countries drift across lists, amber to red, amber to green, green to amber, but never mine, which seemed to have taken a permanent position on that unfortunate red list. That was perhaps the most difficult part of my undergraduate experience, realising that it was impossible for me to go home, and that I would not be able to see my family for over a year, something I never could’ve even imagined.
It's an interesting experience being an international student, a temporary state of getting to call two places home, all whilst attempting to build a life that contained proportional parts of each. But being an international medical student, now that’s a whole other ball game for a number of reasons.
Firstly, you make the conscious decision to leave home for six years or more. And home, for a majority of us, is family, comfort, and a certainty that today will be like yesterday. We choose to leave all that we know behind and take this step for a number of reasons, whether it’s better opportunities, independent self-discovery, or simply a fresh start.
Secondly, you are immediately enrolled in a medical system that carries its own particularities and challenges, and are expected to take on that system’s culture, as it becomes an integral part of the foundations of your chosen career path.
Thirdly, when the world closed down in 2020, medical schools remained open for business to a certain extent. Whilst the majority of other students were given the option to work from home, wherever that may be, we were expected to attend placement and soldier on.
Finally, alongside the usual exhaustion, anxiety and apprehension that are part and parcel of the medical school experience for most, you may also experience an additional set of conflicting symptoms. These include a constant longing for the warm fuzzy feeling that is home, an urge to explore the world as you begin to sense that your youth may be slipping away with your head lost in the books (COVID has unfortunately exacerbated this specific symptom), and a profound sense of guilt that you have the privilege of being able to study abroad but somehow still occasionally wishing that you’d just stayed home.
As you can imagine, it's no picnic to be going through all this & a packed placement schedule & COVID-related anxiety & calculating PCR package costs & the risk of 10-day managed hotel quarantine & you know, the usual eating, sleeping and overall functioning.
As local restrictions eased across most parts of the world, as people returned to schools, universities, restaurants and theatres, eager to get back to “normal”, there remained a group that struggled to follow suit. Getting to see our families every summer and Christmas break is something we took for granted, and could have never imagined losing. In order to visit home and return in time for the start of the year, many of us had to spend over a third of our time off in hotel quarantine, which was incredibly challenging, and carried its weight in psychological and mental impact. We leave quarantine to be immediately thrown back into a high-pressure academic course, all whilst being held to the highest standards of performance and professionalism.
My advice to my fellow international medics is this: find your support bubble, and keep them close. Make sure to reach out to those that you trust around you, your family, and available support services if you ever need them. These past few years have been some of the strangest times that we’ve ever been through, but hopefully the upside of it all is recognising the importance of maintaining a healthy perspective, persisting and moving forward during times of stress, but also knowing when to take a moment to stop, and put your wellbeing first.
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