What subjects did you take in school and how have these influenced your career path?
Specific subjects that I "specialised" in were German & Biology. None of the subjects chosen in school influenced my career path.
What is your education to date?
Medical Doctor with MD, Anaesthetic Registrar
What aspects of your education have proven most important for your job?
Aside from my medical training, I learned professional typing in a voluntary course at school. My computer skills were both self-taught and taught in courses, workshops, from friends.
Very relevant for my medical training were all the side-jobs I did working in different hospitals. Fifteen months spent with the Civil Service in a Paediatric hospital ward working as nursing-aid were particularly helpful in terms of "knowing" how a sick child looks and behaves like. Any practical "front-work" was helpful: I worked as medical student in a Paediatric A&E taking history of all patients coming in and then presented these cases to "real" Paediatric doctors.
I also worked on a Neurological ward as medical student. I believe that it would be very helpful for every doctor when at some stage in their career they would work as a nurse or nursing aid. You get a different feeling for "team-work", communication, patient, etc.
I gave training courses to student nurses which was also very helpful both for improving your presentation skills and realising that you haven't really understood and grasped a topic unless you can explain it clearly!
Ultimately the most important thing in work (and generally) life are and were the people that stood out either from personal and/or professional point of view. I admired my senior Anaesthetic Registrar in Germany for example as he could always explain everything very clearly, was always up to date and always was friendly and helpful. That was and is the basis and backbone of my Anaesthetic training!
Luckily I have always met one or two people who influenced me in that way. I think it is important to seek these influencing people, listen to them and learn from them.
Have you undertaken, or do you plan to undertake any further training as part of your job?
Yes, I would like to get an Anaesthetic Fellowship, Pain Diploma, MBA Health Care Management and maybe a diploma in computer networking & database control.
