medical research work experience year 12

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Year 12 Medical Work Experience: A Comprehensive Guide

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on Year 12 medical work experience , designed to help aspiring young doctors navigate this crucial stage of their medical journey. Whether you’re considering a young doctor programme , medical summer school , or simply seeking valuable medicine work experience , you’re in the right place. 

Our expert tips and advice will give you the knowledge and tools to maximise your medicine work experience opportunities. As a future healthcare professional, gaining medicine work experience is vital for honing your skills, understanding the intricacies of the healthcare system, and building a solid foundation for your career. 

From shadowing experienced physicians to participating in hands-on clinical rotations , we’ll cover everything you need to know about medical work experience . So, let’s dive in and unlock the secrets to a successful medical work experience journey!

Types of Medical Work Experience

Young Doctor Programmes

Many hospitals and medical institutions offer young doctor programmes , which allow aspiring doctors to shadow experienced physicians, observe medical procedures, and participate in clinical rotations. These programmes provide exposure to medical specialities, hands-on learning, and mentorship opportunities . 

To find and apply for young doctor programmes, local research hospitals and medical schools, inquire about their programmes, and follow their application process. Remember to highlight your motivation, passion, and willingness to learn in your application to increase your chances of being accepted.

Medical Summer Schools

Medical summer schools are intensive educational programmes that reputable medical schools or institutions offer during the summer break. These hospital work experience programmes typically include lectures, workshops, and practical training in various medical fields, providing a comprehensive overview of the medical profession. 

Research medical summer school options, review their curriculum and application requirements, and submit a compelling application highlighting your interest in medicine, academic achievements, and extracurricular activities.

When researching medical summer school options, consider Medic Mind as your pathway to explore medicine. Medic Mind offers a comprehensive summer medical experience programme for students interested in pursuing a career in medicine. Their immersive curriculum includes lectures, workshops, and practical training, providing a comprehensive overview of the medical profession. 

Join Medic Mind to gain valuable insights, develop practical skills, and broaden your understanding of the medical field. 

Medicine Work Experience

Medicine work experience refers to any opportunity to gain practical experience in a healthcare setting, such as volunteering at a hospital, shadowing a physician, or assisting with research projects. 

These experiences can be found through networking, online resources , or contacting local hospitals, clinics, or medical professionals. Tailor your application and express your motivation to learn, contribute, and make a positive impact during your medicine work experience.

Tips for a Successful Medical Work Experience in Year 12

Preparation and planning.

Proper preparation and planning are critical to a successful hospital work experience. Research and select the right opportunities that align with your interests and goals. Organise logistics well in advance, including travel, accommodations, and necessary documents. 

Familiarise yourself with the programme’s expectations, requirements, and schedule or work experience. Be proactive and plan to make the most of your experience.

Professionalism and Etiquette

Professionalism and etiquette are essential in a hospital work experience. Dress appropriately, adhere to the dress code, and maintain good hygiene. Practise practical communication skills, including active listening, respect for authority, and confidentiality.

Be punctual and dependable, and demonstrate a positive attitude. Show professionalism in all interactions with patients, healthcare professionals, and staff.

Active Participation and Learning

Actively participate and engage in the medicine work experience to maximise your learning. Take the initiative, ask questions, and seek opportunities to observe, assist, and contribute. Take notes, review relevant literature, and reflect on your experiences. 

Seek feedback from mentors and healthcare professionals to identify areas for improvement and growth. Stay curious, open-minded, and eager to learn throughout your medicine work experience.

Challenges and Solutions in Medicine Work Experience

Despite the benefits of medical work experience, challenges may arise. Some common challenges and solutions include:

Limited Availability

Medical work experience opportunities may be competitive and limited. To increase your chances, apply to multiple programmes or opportunities, and be persistent in your efforts. 

Network with healthcare professionals, join relevant organisations or clubs and explore alternative options, such as remote or virtual experiences.

Time Management

Balancing medical work experience with other commitments, such as school or extracurricular activities, can be challenging to manage your time effectively. Create a schedule that prioritises your medicine work experience, and ensure you meet your responsibilities in other areas. 

Be realistic about your time constraints and avoid over-committing . Please communicate with your mentors or supervisors about your availability and commitments, and seek their guidance on managing your time effectively.

Emotional Challenges

Medical work experience can be emotionally challenging , as it may expose you to difficult situations, including patients in pain or distress. Developing emotional resilience and coping strategies to navigate these challenges is essential. 

Seek support from mentors, colleagues, or professional counsellors if needed. Practice self-care, such as maintaining a healthy lifestyle, engaging in hobbies or activities that bring joy, and taking time off when needed.

Lack of Confidence

As a young doctor, you may need more confidence in your skills or knowledge during your medical work experience. Remember that it’s okay to ask questions, seek guidance , and make mistakes as long as you learn from them. 

Embrace a growth mindset and be willing to learn from feedback and constructive criticism. Confidence comes with hospital work experience; each opportunity is a chance to improve and grow as a medical professional.

Medic Mind’s Summer Work Experience Programme

Our 5-day medical work experience programme takes place over the summer in London. With accommodation and all meals included, this summer placement will enable you to delve into the life of a medical professional and gain hands-on experience, supported by medical experts and senior clinicians. Check out our programme details below!

Spaces are limited so book your place TODAY to avoid disappointment!

In a Nutshell

Medical work experience is crucial to a young doctor’s journey, providing invaluable opportunities for learning, growth, and professional development. From participating in medical summer schools and young doctor programs to gaining hands-on experience in real-world healthcare settings, hospital work experience equips aspiring doctors with essential skills, knowledge, and insights into the medical field.

By selecting the right opportunities, effectively managing time, overcoming challenges, and maintaining professionalism , you can make the most of your medicine work experience. Remember to prioritise your responsibilities, seek guidance, and practice self-care to navigate emotional challenges. Embrace a growth mindset, be willing to learn from mistakes, and continuously strive to improve your skills and knowledge.

With a proactive approach and a determination to excel, your medicine work experience can be a springboard towards a successful medical career. So, please make the most of this unique opportunity, and let it propel you towards your dream of becoming a skilled and compassionate healthcare professional.

Q: Can international students participate in medical work experience programmes?

Answer: International students can participate in medical work experience programmes, depending on the specific requirements and regulations of the country or institution offering the programme. Before applying, research and understanding the eligibility criteria, visa requirements, and any other restrictions are vital.

Q: Is prior medical knowledge or experience necessary for medicine work experience opportunities?

Answer: While prior medical knowledge or experience can be beneficial, it is only sometimes a requirement for medicine work experience opportunities. Some programmes may be designed for beginners or those with limited medical knowledge, while others may have specific prerequisites. It is essential to review the requirements of each opportunity and apply accordingly.

Q: How long does medical work experience usually last?

Answer: The duration of medical work experience can vary depending on the programme or opportunity. Some programs may last a few weeks, while others may span several months or even a year. It is essential to carefully review the duration of the programme and ensure it aligns with your availability and goals.

Q: What should I include in my application for medical work experience opportunities?

Answer: The application requirements for medical work experience opportunities may vary, but typically, you may need to submit a resume, a statement of purpose, reference letters, and other relevant documents. It is essential to carefully review the application guidelines and provide all the requested information in a well-organised and professional manner.

Q: How can I make my medical work experience stand out in my resume or CV?

Answer: To make your medical work experience stand out in your resume or CV, highlight your roles and responsibilities, skills acquired, and any notable achievements during your work experience. Use specific examples and quantifiable results to demonstrate your contributions and impact. It can also be helpful to tailor your resume or CV to the specific medical work experience opportunity or job you are applying for to showcase your relevant skills and experiences.

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Laboratory Work Experience

Are you thinking of a career in science and medical research? QIMR Berghofer has a free work experience program for eligible Year 11 and 12 students.

The laboratory work experience program takes place over three days and offers introductory laboratory training in our purpose-built Education Lab, followed by a placement in one of our working research laboratories.  Students will undertake training in a range of molecular biology skills including:

• Pipetting and serial dilutions
• DNA extraction and PCR
• Agarose gel electrophoresis
• Vortexing and centrifugation
• Blood smears

2024 PROGRAM DATES

• 1-3 July, 2024 Applications open 23 January and close 19 May, 2024 Offers sent 22 May, 2024
• 16-18 September, 2024 Applications open 19 May and close 4 August, 2024 Offers sent 7 August, 2024

HOW TO APPLY

Students are required to provide a brief background on their education, experience and interest in medical research. Before you apply, you will need to do some reading about QIMR Berghofer’s  research and:

• detail why you would like to complete work experience at QIMR Berghofer.
• are a high achiever
• plan to study ua science, health or medical degree at university
• are considering a science-related career

If you have a friend also applying for the program, be sure to let us know as students work in pairs so you may be able to work together. Remember, completing an application form will not automatically qualify you for a placement as positions are merit-based.

If your application was successful, we’ll ask you to complete a work experience agreement form which must be signed by your guardian, school principal and the QIMR Berghofer Education Coordinator.

ELIGIBILITY AND SELECTION CRITERIA

Year 11 and 12 Australian school students who have completed the online application form are eligible for the program. We encourage tertiary students to seek work experience opportunities at QIMR Berghofer through their relevant course coordinators. International students are not eligible for the program.

If you don’t receive a placement in Year 11, we encourage you to reapply the following year. If you are in Year 12 and miss outon a placement, we will add you to our waiting list and you may still receive an offer closer to the date. Unfortunately we cannot offer every student a place in the program due to limited capacity and high demand. 

Students who are unsuccessful in obtaining a place in the work experience program are encouraged to apply for the one day Holiday Science Experience program.

Work Experience Application Form

Applications for the 1-3 July 2024 Work Experience program are now open.

Information Privacy Notice QIMR Berghofer is collecting the information on this form to carry out its functions under the Queensland Medical Research Institute Act 1945. The Institute may disclose some, or all of this information, to appropriate agencies if required. More information is available in our  privacy policy .

FIND OUT MORE

To find out more about this program, contact our Education Coordinators.

Education Coordinator Dr Liam St Pierre (Mon-Wed)  T  (07) 3362 0307 Dr Manuel Serrano Santos (Wed-Fri) T (07) 3845 3919 E [email protected]

Interested in taking part in research? Join our participant register

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Studying at SAHMRI

Work experience program, sahmri offers a selective work experience program to introduce secondary school students to the many career options available in the medical research field..

The program aims to give students a practical understanding of careers in medical research and equip them with the knowledge to make more informed decisions around their future careers.

Over a five-day program, students will be exposed to a range of activities across our research themes. You will have the opportunity to learn from world-class researchers and discover what they do at SAHMRI.

Eligibility

Students from Australian secondary schools who are currently undertaking Year 11 or Year 12 are eligible to apply. Year 10 students can also apply however due to the complexity of the content covered in the program, Year 11 and 12 students will generally be given preference.

At least one place in each program will be identified for a student who identifies as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.

Work experience placements should be arranged as part of your school's recognised work experience program.

Find out more about the 2024 Work Experience Programs

Take a look at the 2021 work experience program highlight reel.

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Work experience programs 2024.

SAHMRI is located on Kaurna Country. We pay respects to the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We are committed to embracing knowledge and culture as we continue our working journey to incorporate Aboriginal health research across all of our themes and further reconciliation.

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Blizard Institute Work Experience Programme (BIWEP)

The Blizard Institute Work Experience Programme welcomes year 10-12 students who are interested in studying Medicine or a Biomedical related degree at university or are considering a career in a similar field.

Our week-long programme will provide students with the exciting opportunity to gain experience in a laboratory setting and learn more about the medical research here at the Blizard Institute.

What will I be doing?

You will mainly be shadowing our PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in the centres of Cell Biology and Cutaneous Research , Genomics and Child Health , Immunobiology , Neuroscience, Surgery and Trauma , and in the Core Laboratory Facilities as per the general schedule below:

Please note that the schedule could be modified by Centre Managers at any time depending on their staff activity/priorities.

Students will be included in one of the Centre of the Cell STEM Pod shows and/or Neuron Pod workshops depending on availability. Centre of the Cell is our public engagement centre for informal science-learning.

There may be some seminars, lectures or meetings scheduled for the week that students will be encouraged to attend, if allowed.

Who can participate?

• Students in years 10-12 residing in London, United Kingdom.
• We prioritise east London-based schools, primarily students from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where we are based.
• A limit of two students will be able to take part in the week-long programme scheduled to run on the fourth week of each month (excluding August and December).

How to apply?

Please note that submitting an application does not automatically guarantee you a place. Students are allocated on a first come, first served basis after considering the content of applications. Priority will be given to students who attend schools based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

If you are a student or school

If you wish to participate in our programme, please email your CV and a completed Blizard Institute Work Experience Form 2024 [PDF 134KB] (including your expression of interest in the personal statement section) to [email protected] , copying in your work experience representative at your school to ensure they are aware of your enquiry. Your application will only be considered if your school representative is included in your email.

If you are an agency, parent or tutor

Please note that we correspond directly with the students or school representatives only.

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Useful Resources

• Blizard Institute Health and Safety Guidance 2023 [PDF 389KB]
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• Blizard Institute Work Experience Form 2024 [PDF 134KB]
• Blizard Institute Work Experience Programme Schedule 2024 [PDF 45KB]

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Contact address

Blizard Institute Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry Queen Mary University of London 4 Newark St London E1 2AT

• "I have gone beyond what I expected to learn. I got to do lots of practical work and learnt so much about the different Centres. I have  developed lost of practical skills such as preparing samples, using pipettes for accurate measuring and lab safety skillls. All staff were extremely nice and made sure I was looked after and enjoying the activities. I have been exposed to careers I didn't even know existed before and to further education options I hadn't considered before. I definetely would recomend this programme because I learnt so much and got to see and do things I would have never imagined. I found this week very useful as it has allowed me to clearly understand what occupation I would like to undertake in the future. I have learnt the importance of team work and communication skills. I have also gained an insight into this field of work and my confidence in working in the field of science has immensely grown." - Woodmansterne School Student
• "I actually witnessed real scientists making discoveries for their project. I am so happy and pleased that I got this opportunity. My patience has developed massively: thanks to this programme I have experienced that it is much more effective to take time to complete work so that the outcome is just as imagined. Staff are incredibly kind and hardworking. I much appreciate how they took time from their busy schedules to help us students, they definetely deserve more recognition. BIWEP is a great way for young people to find interest in science, and to help get an idea of what they want to do in future, even if unsure when they start." - Holy Family Catholic School Student
• "I got a vivid insight into the different fields of research. This allowed me to expand my knowledge and solidify my choice of career. Interacting with staff members was great. They were very friendly and informative. I would recommend this programme to students my age as it helps us understand that there are multiple careers in the science field each with significant levels of importance and prestige." - The Petchey Academy Student
• "I was not only able to obserb in the lab but participated in an impactful way. I am now aware of the multitude of roles neccesary to make all function and find the area of clinical research more appealing. I found it very pleasant as staff was more than happy to help explain any concepts or topics that I found remotely vague or confusing." - Woodhouse College Student  
• "I was so lucky to have the amazing experience of shadowing innovative individuals working at such a prestigious institute. Most notably, the day that I shadowed a doctor at the Royal London hospital was the most exciting and interesting experience of my life and had completely spurred my interest in studying medicine at university. I cannot present my gratitude to you enough for allowing me to have such an amazing experience." - St Thomas More RC School Student
• "This week was an unforgettable experience and I leant so much. It was fascinating to be able to listen to a neurogastroenterologist's journey from training as a doctor to researching the gut-brain axis. Our discussion threw interesting questions on the various treatment possibilities that would arise from this exciting new field." - St Paul’s Girls’ School Student
• "I have a much more realistic insight into what a career in my chosen field is like. After the programme I am more interested in doing an intercalated year that is more research-based.Every member of staff was really welcoming, kind and keen to explain and encouring me to ask any questions. It has been an invaluable experience for me." - The Tiffin Girls’ School Student
• "Thank you for the opportunity presented to me this past week. I would also like to thank you and your colleagues for your warm welcomes and the unforgettable experience you have all given me. I have learnt to be curious and to seize every opportunity that I can." - Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools Student  
• "I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Blizard. I am now confident my future is on the science field. The professionals I met gave me invaluable advice on what is needed for me to achieve this. Thanks for making sure that my week with you was coherent and smooth." - Woolwich Polytechnic School Student
• "Staff were exceptional and very engaging. The activities proposed were fascinating. I enjoyed a risk assessment worshop and the Centre of the Cell as innovative and fun." - Woolwich Polytechnic School Student
• "Thank you for the opportunity I had. I am so grateful as I understand the planning this took and staff being very busy. Thank you for the experience I have gained is priceless and I wish that you understand the extent of my gratitude." - Mossbourne Community Academy Student
• "I really enjoyed speaking to an undergraduate about what doing a science degree at university is like before getting to the stage of working in a lab." - The Henrietta Barnet School Student
• "Thank you for allowing me to work alongside the most amazing and helpful scientists ever. I have really benefitted from this experience as I would like to become a researcher in the near future." - Dukes Aldridge Academy Student
• "Thank you for the work experience opportunity at the Blizard Institute. It has been really helpful and I learned a lot from the staff throughout the week" - Bishop Challoner 6th Form Student
• "It was interesting to be able to see the advanced equipment in use as I would not have accees to it otherwise. I was able to see how theories learnt at school in science lessons are put into practice through research." - Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Student
• "I am extremely grateful for your help in organising my placement and to all the staff: Jan, Belen, Dr" - St Thomas More RC Comprehensive School Student
• "Thank you very much for everything, it was truly an amazing and insightful experience. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the whole programme and it has assured me that I definitely want to go into a lab-based career in the future." - Holly Alleyn’s School Student  
• "Thank you so much for the experience, and I would love to say a massive thank you to all the people that I met on the week and was able to share a part of their day with." - Holly Alleyn’s School Student    
• "Thank you very much for helping me with everything regarding the week, It was an amazing experience that I will never forget!" - St Benedicts School (Ealing) Student
• "Playing games in the Centre of the Cell pod was very informative and interactive." - Bishop Challoner Sixth Form (Year 10) Student
• "I extremely loved being able to widen my knowledge of stem cells through animals (mice)" - Havering Sixth Form College Student
• "Thank you for making our time more interesting and fun! We really appreciate it. Wish you all the best with your research!" - St Paul's Way Trust School Student
• "Enjoyed absolutely everything! Thanks for providing such helpful academic and research career advice." - London Design & Engineering UTC Student

Centre of the Cell Work Experience

Centre of the Cell is an informal science education centre located within the Blizard Institute which offers work experience for young people aged between 14 and 19. Our work experience is focused around the skills required for science communication but can also be extremely useful for anyone interested in a healthcare/STEM related career. We currently run two types of work experience - virtual and in-person. There is crossover between the two types, so it is advisable to only take part in one of them.

Both virtual and in-person placements will offer plenty of activities to develop transferable skills. For example, you will be given the chance to interview a medical/dental student and/or a scientist, gaining an insight into their career while developing your communication skills. Another of our popular activities is the chance to design an online science game, developing research and presentation skills.

To find out more about our work experience, email [email protected] .

Please note that our work experience does not include any lab work.

In-person Work Experience

Week long placements during term time. These placements will take place during the school day (10am-3pm) so permission will be required from the school. This placement includes supporting with the delivery of our school events, learning how a science centre runs behind the scenes.

Virtual Work Experience

Our virtual work experience runs during February Half Term and the Summer holidays. This placement is 4 days long, from 10am-3pm . This work experience incorporates a mixture of video calls, and independent work where you will be sent the activity through email. In this work experience you are able to organise your time, helping you to develop independence and time management skills.

Visit the Centre of the Cell website

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Year 12 Work Experience Programme

This programme will give you an insight into the exciting world of research at Imperial College. 

At a glance

• Applications open: 9 January 2024
• Applications closed: 6 March 2024
• Decisions released: 3 May 2024
• Dates: 1 - 5 July 2024
• Non-residential
• For year 12 students

About Work Experience Programme

The work experience programme is designed to give students an insight into life as a researcher and other careers in higher education. Students will experience working life, from the daily commute to managing their time and navigating a professional environment, all whilst gaining a fantastic insight into the exciting world of research at Imperial. In 2024, the following departments will take part:

• Bioengineering
• Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment
• Mathematics
• Chemical Engineering
• National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI)

Applications for the Work Experience Programme closed on 6 March 2024. Late applications cannot be considered.

What to expect

During the five day programme you will get an insight into research being conducted within your chosen department and academic careers associated to this field of study. The programme will attempt to simulate typical working life. You will be expected to commute to and from campus each day, have lunch with your peers and meet deadlines. You will also have access to research and teaching laboratories, workshops and specialist technical suites whilst in your department. 

Please note that each department runs their own timetable and the content of each stream varies. 

As well as experiencing the world of academic research, students will also be given talks relevant to applying to university covering topics such as writing effective personal statements and interview skills.  You will be supported by a student ambassador throughout your time on the programme. Our ambassadors will help you navigate the campus, provide support during tasks and be able to answer your questions about university life.

At the end of the week there will be an academic-style conference where students will work in small groups to present a poster and short oral presentation about their time on the programme to their peers, leaders and invited guests.

This summer school is fully funded (free to successful applicants), which includes all course fees, materials as well as lunch.  Travel is not included, and it is expected that most participants will live in or near London (or have family in London they can stay with for the duration of the programme). However we may be able to offer successful applicants  financial assistance for their travel. 

Year 12 Work Experience promo

"I would 100% recommend the programme to anyone considering applying, because you gain a lot of advice from both people who have been through the admissions process recently and the admissions tutors themselves and you learn more about your subject in a more interactive way than you would at school." — Siyani, year 12 student, Work Experience Programme 2020 (life sciences stream)

Applicant information

Eligibility criteria.

To apply for the Y12 Work Experience Programme, you must be:

• in Year 12 at the time of application,
• able to travel to and from Imperial College London each day

This outreach programme is funded by Imperial College London and aims to support state school students from backgrounds under-represented at university and Imperial. We use the criteria below to assess who is eligible to participate. The more criteria you meet, the more likely your application will be successful.

We recommend that you use our  eligibility checker tool   to see if you are eligible to apply.

 We will prioritise your application if:

• You have been in care
• You live independently (estranged), meaning you no longer have the support of your family due to a breakdown in the relationship which has led to ceased contact

 We will also assess whether:

• You are a  young carer  and have caring responsibilities for a close relative with a disability, long-term illness, mental health condition, or drug or alcohol problem that is a significant demand on your time
• Your family income is below £50,000 each year
• You are eligible for free school meals and/or pupil premium
• Your parents/guardians did not attend university
• You live in a neighbourhood with low overall progression rates to higher education ( POLAR4  Quintile 1 or 2 areas) or high levels of deprivation ( IMD  Quintile 1 areas)
• Your school has a high percentage of students receiving free school meals
• Your school has below average attainment

Academic requirements

To be eligible for this programme, you should: 

• Expect to study a science, technology, engineering or maths subject at university
• Have achieved a minimum of eight GCSEs with at least five at grades 7-9, including maths and sciences
• Have achieved a minimum of grade 5 in GCSE English Language

Please note that there are specific A-level (or equivalent) subject requirements for each department. For 2024 these are as follows:

• To apply for Bioengineering you need to be studying Maths and either Chemistry or Physics.
• To apply for Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment you need to be studying Maths and one of the following Biology, Chemistry, Geography, Geology, Maths or Physics.
• To apply for Materials you need to be studying Maths and either Chemistry or Physics.
• To apply for Mathematics you need to be studying Maths and Further Maths.
• To apply for Physics you need to be studying Physics and Maths.
• To apply for Chemical Engineering you need to be studying Chemistry and Maths.
• To apply for NHLI you need to be studying Biology and either Chemistry, Maths or Physics.

How to apply

Applications for summer 2024 closed on 6 March 2024. Late applications cannot be considered. We will release decisions on 3 May.

Applications are made through Aspire, our online application system. A link to Aspire will be added to this webpage once applications are open.

Setting up your account You must create an account with Aspire before you can complete your application.

• If you have applied to an Imperial Outreach programme in the past, you can use your existing account. There is a forgotten password feature on the Aspire login page.
• If this is your first application to one of our programmes, we recommend you use a personal email address rather than a school email address when creating your account. Security settings in some school email servers will prevent you from receiving emails from Aspire.

Completing your application Once you are logged in you will need to start a new application. As part of the application form you will need to tell us about your school, the subjects you are currently studying and the course(s) you plan to study post-16. Although the form will force you to include English, Maths and Science for Key Stage 4 (GCSE or equivalent) and ask you if you are planning on studying specific STEM subjects post-16, you do need to tell us about all the subjects you are studying at school. Please use the 'Other subjects' section to add this information.

Please take care to ensure you select the correct programme when using the drop-down options. Some of our programmes have similar names, so it is important to double-check.

You will be asked questions relating to the eligibility criteria listed above. Where possible, please try to have this information to hand before you apply. You will also be asked to write a short personal statement. This gives you the chance to tell us more about why you are applying for this programme and why you think you would be suitable.

As part of the application process, we will seek references from a parent/guardian and a teacher at your current school. Please speak to the individuals you would like to provide these references in advance, so you can check you have the correct email address and contact numbers for them and that they are happy to support your application.

References Once you have successfully submitted your application, we will email your parent/guardian and teacher referees. They will be sent a personalised link to Aspire, where they will provide information to support your application.

The reference forms ask similar questions about the eligibility criteria and include the opportunity to provide a supporting statement. These statements can be used to let us know about other challenges you may have faced and/or what you might get out of participating in the programme. Teachers will also be asked to verify the subject/grade information you provided in your application.

Decisions We will release decisions via email on 3 May 2024. If you are offered a place on the programme, or on the waitlist, you will have a limited amount of time to accept this offer. Successful applicants will receive details on the next steps.

For information about the application process, please see our  application FAQs .

For more information, please see our  Outreach Programme FAQs .

If your query is not answered in the FAQs, please email us via  [email protected]  or phone +44 (0) 20 7594 3575.

Want to stay up to date with Imperial outreach events? Click on the links below to follow us on our social media sites and follow the hashtag, #icoutreach

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Science in Health Work Experience

• Calendar June, July
• Clock outline More than one day

Successful year 12 applicants have the opportunity to participate in laboratory-based work experience and will be given an extended taste of the research environment within the School of Medicine.

Pupils get to experience first-hand a range of cutting edge technologies, working in trios with a number of different investigators and their research groups.

These include:

• molecular biology
• flow cytometry
• DNA sequencing
• egg microinjection
• mass spectrometry
• X-ray crystallography
• pharmacology
• cellular immunology.

Pupils learn the important place animal experimentation has in basic biomedical research and in the development of new medical treatments. Pupils also get to meet and spend time with PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom are in the early stages of their career.

The scheme runs for a four-week period in the months of June and July. Acceptance onto this work experience scheme is competitive. The application form is available to download on our website . The annual closing date for the scheme is 31 March.

Find out more

For more information about the activity, please visit our website .

About the organiser

This activity is organised by Engagement team, School of Medicine. Contact Karen Edwards at [email protected] or +44 (0)2920 742104 for more details.

How to book

You can download an application form on our website. The annual closing date for the scheme is 31 March. If you have any questions please get in touch.

Email [email protected]

Ticket This activity is free

• School of Medicine, Main Hospital Building
• University Hospital of Wales
• Tick Key stage five - ages 16-18, years 12-13

Curriculum themes

• Tick Health and wellbeing
• Tick Science and technology
• Tick Life sciences
• Tick Extracurricular

Activity type

• Tick Work experience
• Tick Careers and employability
• Tick Engagement with our research
• Tick Extracurricular or independent learning
• Tick Promoting higher education
• Tick Supporting curriculum themes
• Tick Widening university participation

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MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

One of the world's leading research institutes, our scientists are working to advance understanding of biological processes at the molecular level - providing the knowledge needed to solve key problems in human health.

Work Experience

The LMB offers a variety of work experience placements for students in Years 10 to 13 (aged 14 and above). Our placements provide hands-on experience of working in an academic research institute. Placements may be within an LMB  research group ,  scientific facility  or  support services , highlighting the variety of roles that underpin our cutting edge research.

We have partnered with Form the Future to offer in-person placements to underrepresented students at the LMB during the summer. Form the Future, a not-for-profit careers and employment company, was founded in 2015 to help young people find their route through education into employment and provide employers access to their future talent. Committed to each stage of young people’s development, the dedicated team provides schools, colleges and other groups with high-quality outsourced Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) services.

Applications are open for placements for:

• Year 10 students (from July 8 th – 12 th ). Find the application form here .
• Year 12 students (from July 29 th to August 2 nd ). Find the application form here .

The application deadline is March 29 th 2024.

Additional placements will be advertised via this webpage when they become available.

If you are an undergraduate student, you may be interested in our  Student Placement Scheme .

For any questions relating to work experience, please email  Public Engagement Team .  

Placement length

Depending which placement you apply for, the advert will tell you how long they run. Advertised work experience placements from the LMB can vary from 1-2 weeks (usually in July and August).

If selected for work experience, you will be expected to attend all days of the placement.

Food and travel expenses

For all students who applied to an advertised work experience placement via Form the Future or via our website we will cover reasonable travel expenses and offer a voucher to cover food and refreshments (approx. £5 a day) throughout their placement. This is given as a voucher which is covered in cost after spending by the LMB.

Quotes from 2023 placements

Siena – hosted by Magda Sutcliffe

“I really enjoyed the setting. LMB is so welcoming and different to anything I have ever seen. Learning to use the various equipment was great.

I plan on pursuing medicine and so seeing how the lab work can be applied to healthcare was extremely useful. It also provided the possibility of an alternative lab job in the future.”

Tolu – hosted by Magda Sutcliffe

“I really enjoyed the experience at the LMB. My highlights were going into the lab and doing hands on work instead of just observing. It emphasises the difference between small school labs and real-world labs. 

I want to study pharmacy, and this has solidified my decision as I’ve read an article that shows how molecular biology and pharmacy link and how it affects the medical industry.”

Annabelle – hosted by Millie-Jane Adcock

“The highlights of my time at the LMB were gaining new lab skills such as using pipettes and various robots. 

This experience has sparked an interest in laboratory work and careers in research because I found the work very interesting and enjoyed working in the laboratory environment.”

Summer – hosted by Lori Passmore

“I really enjoyed having a tour of the building to see all the equipment that gets used and learning how it’s used to aid research. I also really enjoyed the hands-on experience and getting to help conduct real experiments to see how methods are used and build my confidence and skills when doing practical work. 

I felt free to ask questions about university and career paths after that and I received informative, honest answers. I plan on doing a biochemistry degree at university, and this placement confirmed that this is definitely the route I want to take.”

Mariana – hosted by Lori Passmore

“Throughout this fantastic experience, I aided in a variety of experiments but my favourite has to be the CPF PAS changing an immature mRNA into a mature mRNA. Although the knowledge needed is years away in my academic career my hosts always ensured I understood, breaking down concepts and applying it to facts I learn in my current A-levels.

Originally, I worried about the work life balance in a research lab, but I learnt the lab is a community of people who consistently share knowledge and help each other. I plan to follow a more research focused life plan.”

Rami – hosted by Boglárka Anna Vámos

“Some of the highlights at the LMB was discovering how researchers used Cryo-electron microscopy to understand Alzheimer’s and even won an award, I found that quite inspiring. I also enjoyed using new tools and equipment for example centrifuges and vortex and learning a new way of pipetting I thought that was really engaging.

My time at the LMB has given me some clarification that I would like to do a health science (biomedicine) as before I wasn’t quite sure as I knew the content that would be taught but wasn’t sure what type of practical things I could be doing. I’ve never had any hands-on experience outside of school, so this was really eye opening and a unique opportunity to have.” 

Raufaeel – hosted by Andy Howe

“The highlight of my time at the LMB was learning to solder as it was a new skill.

The placement has been useful in helping me make decisions about my future because I was able to receive career advice from experts and it allowed me to understand the potential risks and benefits of each one of my ideas.”

Quotes from 2022 placements

“Working in a research-focused environment was something I found very enjoyable. I liked the emphasis on taking the time to do something right instead of making something commercially for a profit.”

“My time at the LMB was my first hands-on experience in a lab outside of school. During this time, I really enjoyed learning about and seeing what a career in science might look like. I particularly enjoyed learning about and examining  Drosophila melanogaster , as well as learning about how they could be used to aid research and test out theories in the lab. I also thoroughly enjoyed carrying out a bacterial protein expression and learning about the science behind this.”

“My time at the LMB has certainly been very helpful in guiding my decision-making over my future career, as it has given me first-hand insight into what a career in science might entail. I had a great time while I was here, and I plan to pursue a career in this field.”

Access and Widening Participation

Year 12 and 13

• Discover UCL Summer School
• Experience UCL Days

Information, Advice and Guidance

Population health sciences non-residential summer school, realising opportunities.

• Resources for young people in Years 12 and 13

UCL Cancer Institute Taster Day

Ucl school of management non-residential summer school, ucl study prep.

• Year 12* Sutton Trust Summer School

Online and in-person events for Year 12 students from the least represented groups in Higher Education covering a host of topics.

Online information and resources for young people in Years 12 and 13. 

UCL Study Prep is a free online course for students in Year 13 who are preparing to study at university. 

UCL is a member of Realising Opportunities (RO), a unique collaboration of leading, research intensive universities across the country. 

Experience UCL

An exciting opportunity for young people who are care experienced, a young carer, a forced migrant, estranged from parent(s), from the Gypsy or Traveller community or who have a disability to experience what life is like as an UCL student.

Discover UCL

The Discover UCL Summer School is an exciting opportunity exclusively for deaf and hard of hearing students in Year 12. 

UCL East Schools Engagement

Connecting schools and young people who are local to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with expertise across the university.

UCL/Sutton Trust Summer Schools

The UCL Summer Schools are an exciting opportunity for Year 12* students to learn more about their chosen subject and explore what studying at UCL might be like.

*(S5 in Scotland, Year 13 in Northern Ireland)

Y12 LondonMed Summer School

This Year 12 Summer School is run jointly by four London medical schools and will provide an insight into studying medicine in London.

Target Medicine Mentoring Programme

The Target Medicine Mentoring Scheme is a year-long programme for Year 12 students from underrepresented backgrounds with the potential and desire to go to medical school.

An interactive in person experience for Year 12 students to hear from UCL researchers, scientists, and medical professionals.

An interactive, week-long summer school for Year 12 students in London and its surrounding areas.

An interactive, week-long summer school for Year 12 students looking to learn more about Health Sciences.

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• Staff Gateway
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Work experience

Work experience programme, public engagement, outreach events, media coverage, outreach committee, public engagement with research seed fund, opportunities and resources for staff, other placements .

A hospital-based work experience programme is also available via the NHS Voluntary Services Office.

UNIQ Summer Schools

UNIQ helps many students from diverse backgrounds to make successful applications to the University of Oxford. 

In2science empowers students from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve their potential and progress to research careers through high quality work placements and careers guidance.

Student feedback

‘I wanted to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part in the work experience programme. It was amazing to be able to talk to so many doctors and researchers and find out about their work and this week has really highlighted to me that medicine is what I would like to be doing in the future.’ 

‘The work experience programme made me consider intercalating at medical school and find an area of research I’m interested in, which I can potentially pursue as an academic doctor.’

‘The placement reaffirmed my interest in science and also made research appear more appealing and possible. It also increased my medical experience and has given me experiences I can talk about.’

'The placement has made me interested in research, as I now realise that research and clinical aspects of medicine are very interlinked and depend on each other.'

Enjoy a fun liquid nitrogen demo

Carry out practical work with our scientists

Discuss and take part in current research

Shadow surgeons and research nurses on the wards

Discover the range of healthcare facilities

Learn new skills and techniques in the lab

Spend valuable time in the lab

See demonstrations of innovative new technology

Nds work experience programme for students aged 16 or over.

The Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences (NDS) at the University of Oxford provides a limited number of work experience placements for students aged 16 years old or over. We offer 12 placements over two weeks (six students per week) in July of every year.

The five-day programme is designed to offer students valuable experience in science and medicine, and will include time in the lab, the opportunity to shadow clinicians and research nurses, and a careers talk and feedback session.

During the week, students will take part in hands-on activities within different research groups in order to:

• Build knowledge and basic lab skills and techniques;
• Gain an understanding of how academic research and clinical trials are conducted;
• Experience the range of research areas and professions within NDS.

Previous NDS Work Experience Programmes have included:

• An introduction to organ transplant, which involved learning about the impact of different perfusion devices in preserving organs
• A demonstration of the High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU)
• Shadowing surgeons and research nurses on the urology ward
• Carrying out practical work with scientists from the Transplantation Research and Immunology Group (TRIG)
• A tour of the hospital, which involved visiting the wards and talking to patients
• An introduction to global surgery
• Meeting the Head of Department, Professor Freddie Hamdy
• Carrying out a chocolate trial in the Surgical Intervention Trials Unit (SITU)

NDS Work Experience Programme 2023

Read about the 2023 NDS Work Experience Programme

NDS WORK EXPERIENCE PROGRAMME 2022

Read about the 2022 NDS Work Experience Programme

NDS Virtual Work Experience Programme 2020 and 2021

Due to the COVID-19 situation, we were not able to offer our usual on-site programme. However, we were pleased that we were able to provide an alternative programme online.

Read about the 2020 NDS Virtual Work Experience Programme

Read about the 2021 NDS and NDORMS Virtual Work Experience Programme

NDS WORK EXPERIENCE PROGRAMME 2024

Applications for the 2024 NDS Work Experience Programme are now closed.

The work experience dates for 2024 are:

Week 1: 8-12  July 

Week 2:  15-19 July

Students attend for one of the two weeks listed above.    

If you have any questions, please email Louise King ( [email protected] )

Students must be aged 16 or over on the first day of the placement. 

Have you thought of a career in medical research?

We are hosting a series of online talks/conversations with scientists from NDS, NDORMS and other University of Oxford Medical Science departments for Y12 students. These will be a mix of information about both the scientists careers and their research work with plenty of time for Q&As on either.

‘I really enjoyed the ability to see a range of areas of the hospital from clinical exposure to trying out research for ourselves.’

‘It was a great week and I learnt a lot. I especially enjoyed meeting so many different doctors and scientists.’

‘I found the tour of the hospital and the time spent in clinics the most useful, as it involved visiting the wards and talking to patients, which was my first patient contact. It was interesting to hear how the doctors spoke to patients one-on-one when having to deliver potentially devastating news.’

‘I really enjoyed the session to do with the HIFU research. It was really interesting and I may use this for a research project of my own.’

‘I really enjoyed the hands-on approach to the work experience and the openness which let me feel comfortable enough to ask questions. I loved the range of areas we got involved in. All parts we visited were extremely interesting and I will feel more inclined to follow the NDS research in the future.’

‘It has motivated me to read up more about clinical trials and ongoing research which has further inspired me to pursue a career in clinical research. It has shown me how varied a career in science is and how many different fields you could go into.’

'It was a good variety of experience, all was presented well, and was all very interesting. I particularly enjoyed shadowing doctors and nurses and seeing the HIFU machine.'

‘The most useful part for me was the time spent in the lab, as it showed what the life of a research scientist was like. The most interesting bit though was being in the clinic with patients, seeing the patient-doctor interactions and the tour by the vascular surgeon.’

‘I really enjoyed the morning we spent in the labs culturing CHO: CD154 cells and discussing current research that was taking place there.’

Medicine Virtual Work Experience

Are you interested in gaining work experience in a hospital setting?

The University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton are pleased to offer students in Year 12 the opportunity to apply for LIVE virtual work experience delivered through Microsoft Teams. This is project aimed at students who are interested in studying Medicine. It is a very popular programme so please ensure you check the eligibility criteria before you apply.

• Currently in Year 12 or first year of college/lower sixth
• Interested in studying medicine
• Currently studying A Level Biology
• Living in the UK

This programme is open to  all students based in the UK however there are places set aside for students who meet 2 or more widening participation criteria.

A typical timetable usually includes:  

• Operating Theatre
• Ward Rounds
• Outpatient Clinic
• Apprenticeship Opportunities
• Opportunity to speak to current medical students
• Opportunities to speak with a variety of clinicians representing Pharmacology, Health Sciences, Histopathology, Cardiac Physiology and more.

As this is a live programme, it is always subject to change depending on the day-to-day happenings within the hospital.

We expect students to treat this experience like a face-to-face work experience placement and students who are late or fail to attend sessions will be removed from the programme. Please ensure you are available for all days before you apply.

Usually, the programme is delivered online between 9am and 4pm.

The application form link for our work experience dates are below. Please note the opening and closing date for these applications.

The dates for 2023/24 are now confirmed as:

February 13 and 14 2024 (applications open 28 December 2023 and closes 15 January 2024) Apply when open

August 28 and 29 2024 (applications open 17 June and closes 1 July 2024) Apply when open

Hear from some of our previous students:

Throughout the work experience I was aware of the challenges facing doctors when working long hours and facing stressful situations. But speaking to the doctors and hearing them overcoming these obstacles, really inspired me. I understand that a career in medicine will not be easy but after my work experience, I am even more determined and motivated to pursue a career in this rewarding field.

The outpatient clinic session was a great way to see the doctor-patient interactions since it made me feel like I was there with the patients. During those virtual career experience days, I met many different healthcare professionals who were highly inspirational to me since they gave me a feel of all the various careers in healthcare. Meeting all those professionals made me realise that I shouldn't limit myself to only one job and encouraged me to research more about the different career paths.

Welcome to Research Placements & Experiences (formerly Nuffield Research Placements)

The Research Placements & Experience programme (formerly Nuffield Research Placements) provides engaging, hands-on projects, where Year 12 students have the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution towards the work of a host organisation through a well-supervised but independent placement collaboration relating to an area of science, quantitative social science, computing, technology, engineering or maths (or a combination!).

Students can apply via the button below but please make sure you've checked your eligibility requirements

Check eligibility requirements here

Which placement?

Students can participate in Research Placements or Experience Placements. Both offer a rewarding experience for enthusiastic and curious young people

Research Placements

Research Placements are 2-week collaborations with a STEM-related knowledge expert on a live research question or area of development. While producing a scientific or technical report and poster, this opportunity ensures that students contribute meaningfully to the host organisation's current work.

Experience Placements

Experience Placements are 5-day explorations with industry experts to identify essential skills needed for employment in a specific STEM sector of interest. While producing a workbook and reflective report, students gain insight into working in

professional environments as well as knowledge of the challenges for different sectors, in turn preparing them for employment.

Employers who are interested in supporting students through a supervised placement can register below. Alternatively, feel free to contact your Regional Coordinating Team to hear more about the benefits of providing a placement and what's involved. Contact details can be found HERE .

The benefits of a Nuffield Research Placement

Title real-world experience.

Challenge yourself with a meaningful and rewarding supervised research project in a professional working environment.

Title Gain new skills

Learn to write a scientific report and develop your research, critical thinking and time management skills.

Title Valuable insight

Gain workplace skills and take an inside look at the sort of careers available to you.

Title Build your confidence

Take responsibility for your own project that’ll be useful to professional scientists, social scientists, engineers, technologists and/or mathematicians.

Title Exploration

Engage in a unique experience with professionals and become more confident working on novel situations.

Title Networking

Connect with your peers and make new network contacts you can keep in touch with in the future.

Previous student experiences

Title Abrar and Mutahir

Abrar and Mutahir talk about their placements at the University of Manchester.

Title Ife and Ian

Watch what happened on Ife and Ian’s placements at UCL.

Title Asma and Senel

Learn more from Asma and Senel about their placements at the Natural History Museum.

• Studying medicine
• Making an application
• Work experience

Why is work experience needed?

Medical schools require applicants to have an understanding of what a career in medicine involves. It is therefore essential that applicants gain people-focused experience of providing care or service before submitting their application.

There are two basic types of experience that applicants can have:

• Working with other people in a caring or service role, and in particular with people who are ill, disabled or disadvantaged. (Strongly recommended)
• Direct observation of healthcare.

It is important to remember that work experience can take many forms. It can be a voluntary opportunity or a paid job. While shadowing a doctor can be useful, medical schools recognise that this is not attainable for everyone. They see volunteering in a residential care home as just as good a source of experience. If you have a weekend job in a shop, then this can be a good source of experience too.

Where to start

To get work experience, prepare a short CV and hand this in to places in your area which relate to healthcare, saying that you are willing to volunteer. These places could be care homes, hospices, general practice surgeries, and of course hospitals. If you have no luck with this then do not worry.

Other useful activities might include reading medical journals or following news about the National Health Service. These things will emphasise an interest in a medical career and willingness to research. If you know any doctors or can talk to your GP then arranging time to speak with one will provide you with material to use in the interview, as well as demonstrate motivation and initiative. All healthcare professionals can be a valuable source of information and experience, not just doctors. After all, doctors work as part of large teams involving many healthcare professions, so demonstrating that you have a sense of those professions and how they work together will help you in both your personal statement and interview.

It is important to remember that your experiences are only as good as how you reflect on them in your personal statement and at interview. The ability to reflect on what you have learnt, both about yourself and about medicine, through your experiences is the key thing medical schools are looking for when they assess your application.

Work experience guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic

Medical schools are aware that the opportunities open to you have been affected and will take this into account. M ake sure to check the medical school’s website for information on work experience. Additionally, keep in mind that clinical work experience is not generally a requirement for applying to medical school in any year. 

Read our  guidance on gaining relevant experience to study medicine in the time of Covid-19  for ideas on how to gain experience during the pandemic. Our tips for gaining relevant experience include:

Keeping a reflective diary on what is happening in the news and online

Many healthcare professionals are posting online about their experience of working during the pandemic. Listen to what they have to say and reflect on this. All healthcare professionals can be a valuable source of information and experience, not just doctors. After all, doctors work as part of large teams involving many healthcare professions, so demonstrating that you have a sense of those professions and how they work together will help you in both your personal statement and interview. Remember that some media sources are more reliable than others and that sometimes ‘political spin’ is put on articles to help create a headline.

Making use of online resources

There are some fantastic free online resources available that will give you a taste of what working in healthcare is all about. For example:

• Brighton and Sussex Medical School has created a free   virtual work experience   course which explores several different medical specialities
• RCGP has also created a free interactive platform called   Observe GP   which highlights the many different aspects of working in primary care
• The GMC and NHS England have developed a free virtual reality app providing insight into a patient's journey to GP practice

Volunteer in your spare time

All forms of voluntary work can provide helpful work experience. While volunteer work in the NHS might be disrupted at this time other schemes may still be in operation and worth exploring.

Useful volunteering websites may include, but are not limited to:

• The   Do IT   website
• The   Nextdoor   website

Gaining relevant experience to study medicine and the impact of Covid-19

 Further reading

• Guidance on relevant experience for applying to medical school
• Guidance on gaining relevant experience to study medicine in the time of Covid-19
• Work experience  - in fosheet  
• Doctor, doctor... How do I get work experience? - GP Work Experience Toolkit

Virtual work experience

These courses have been recognised by medical schools as a suitable element of relevant experience to help prepare an application to medicine.

BSMS Virtual Work Experience

• Observe GP Virtual Work Experience
• Course types
• Entry requirements for 2024 start
• Admissions tests
• Personal statement
• International applicants

Work experience guidelines

Gaining experience during the covid-19 pandemic, doctor, doctor… how do i get work experience.

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Work Experience and Internships

• Newcastle University
• Centre for Cancer

We work in partnership with local schools and academies to promote our research and to outline potential careers in cancer research. Our academic and research staff regularly visit schools to deliver talks and hands-on workshops that demonstrate laboratory skills and techniques.

We offer a range of opportunities for potential researchers of the future to gain experience of conducting research in an internationally leading centre.

Pre-University work experience (year round)

Our technical staff organise 2-3, week long events for Year 12-13 students that introduce career opportunities available as research technicians and incorporate demonstrations of a range of research techniques in varied laboratory environments.

Pre-University summer placements

Several of our research groups host individual Year 12 students for 1-3 months laboratory placements. We also host students who have secured bursaries through the Nuffield Future Researchers scheme.

Undergraduate summer placements

Laboratory placements are available for Newcastle-based second year undergraduate science and medical students. Small bursaries to support these placements may be available from the University , Wellcome Trust , Biochemical Society ,  Pathological Society and other charitable organisations.

Who to contact?

If you would like to know more about our placements and internships, please email us.

Medical School Expert

The Complete Guide To Medical Work Experience (2024)

Every article is fact-checked by a medical professional. However, inaccuracies may still persist.

Medical work experience is easily one of the most important aspects of a medicine application.

It grants students a glimpse into the life of a doctor: the struggles they face, the triumphs they experience and just generally grants an unprecedented view behind the curtain of healthcare delivery.

The value students gain from quality work experience is also reflected in medical schools’ demands.

It’s rare that an applicant will be able to secure an offer without at least some evidence of first-hand experience of caring for a patient.

In this complete guide to medical work experience, I’m going to explain everything you need to know about the subject: from what it is, how to get it, why it’s important and how to make the most of it.

INCLUDED IN THIS GUIDE:

What Is Medical Work Experience?

Medical work experience is essentially anything you might do to try and get a taste of what a career in medicine would be like.

It can be anything from watching a surgeon perform an operation to speaking to a physiotherapist about the challenges they face working with patients.

Medical work experience can be divided into four main types:

• Direct observation
• Volunteering
• Paid employment

Direct observation generally equates to you shadowing a healthcare professional.

It could be you shadowing a junior doctor on the wards, it could be you shadowing a GP in their clinic or it could be you shadowing a community nurse visiting patients at home.

Holding a volunteer position can also be a great way to gain medical work experience.

This could be volunteering at a care home, volunteering with a homeless charity or volunteering as a Scout leader.

Any role in which you’ll demonstrate some of the necessary qualities to be a doctor will make for great work experience.

Paid employment runs along pretty much the same lines as volunteering, except you’re in a job where you get paid!

For example, working as a teaching assistant in a special needs school will teach you a huge amount about interacting with children with learning disabilities- so would be incredibly valuable to your medicine application, but instead of simply volunteering you may be paid for your time.

Lastly, virtual work experience is an online course (or content you can consume) that teaches you more about the medical field.

This can be anything from a live Q&A with a doctor over Zoom to a text-based e-learning course about the multidisciplinary team.

Why Is Medicine Work Experience Important?

Medical work experience is important for two main reasons:

• It gives you an idea of whether you’d enjoy working as a doctor
• It makes you a stronger applicant in the eyes of a medical school

It can be easy to get caught up in the second of these reasons and forget about the first!

When you’re concentrating on trying to make yourself a more competitive applicant in such a saturated marketplace, you can easily forget that your work experience is serving a vital purpose to you as a person too.

Ironically, there’s no better time to discover that medicine isn’t for you than during your work experience.

You’ll save yourself a huge amount of time, effort and debt compared to getting to medical school and then dropping out halfway through.

However, there is no denying that work experience is vitally important to your application’s success.

Medical schools want to see that you’ve put yourself in a position to truly be able to judge whether or not you think medicine is for you.

Do You Need Work Experience To Get Into Medicine?

By having a strong portfolio of work experience, you’re proving to a medical school a number of different things.

You’re proving that you’ve gone out of your way to really try and find out if you’re suited to a career in healthcare.

You’ve not just read the job description and thought it would be a laugh, you’ve got out the door and done your best to place yourself in the shoes of a doctor in their day-to-day life.

You’re also proving to medical schools that you’re dedicated to studying medicine.

It takes a considerable amount of effort to volunteer at a charity shop each week, consistently organise events for a local youth group or keep in touch with an elderly person at risk of loneliness.

By demonstrating these things, you’re painting yourself in a very favourable light in the eyes of a medical school.

Because of this, work experience is often an incredibly important pillar in any successful medicine application.

But, that’s not to say you can’t get an offer for medicine without it.

The long and short of it is you just generally need to have a good reason for not being able to get the work experience.

It’s impossible to define what a ‘good’ reason is, as every case is judged on its individual merits by each individual medical school, but common reasons would include personal illness, family emergencies or global pandemics(!).

If you’re in the difficult position of having less work experience than you’d like, I’d advise all you can do is get the most experience you can as your circumstances will allow.

Just because you missed your week of hospital shadowing doesn’t mean you can’t have a phone conversation with the doctor you were due to shadow to discuss their experiences of working in medicine.

It’s all about working with what you’ve got and then explaining your circumstances to the medical schools in your personal statement and potentially at interview.

Medical schools aren’t trying to penalise you for events that are outside your control but they do need to be satisfied that the reason you don’t have much work experience is because you couldn’t be bothered to organise it.

Get the more detailed answer in my dedicated article answering ‘can you get into medicine without work experience?’

What’s The Best Work Experience For Medicine?

As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, work experience is pretty integral to getting yourself an offer to study medicine.

With this being the case, to get the most bang for your buck, you’ll likely want to know what the best work experience for medicine is?

The best work experience for medicine is an experience that gives you an honest insight into what it’s genuinely like to be a doctor. This could be shadowing a doctor, it could be mirroring the challenges they face through volunteering, or it could be having a frank conversation with a surgeon.

Unfortunately, there is no singular ‘golden’ placement that will guarantee you an offer.

The real value in work experience is what you take away from it, not what you actually physically did during it.

That being said, it is much easier to be able to reflect on events that are more closely related to healthcare than more tangentially related experiences.

For this reason, if you can I’d recommend trying to secure at least one hospital based placement and one community based placement.

Community essentially just means medicine being practiced outside a hospital- so this could be a GP practice, a community nurse, local pharmacy or sports physiotherapist.

That way you’ll have covered the two main divisions of healthcare: primary and secondary care.

Other than that, I think your ‘best’ work experience is whatever has the greatest impact on you as an individual and in some way opens your eyes to the realities of working in medicine.

How To Get Medical Work Experience

The reality is that quality work experience can be hard to come by.

There’ll often be plenty of other students applying for exactly the same placements as you and not every healthcare centre is set up to be able to facilitate shadowing.

My biggest tip for you for securing great placements is to play the numbers game.

By that I mean you need to be aware that you may have a low probability of success with each inquiry- but because of this you just need to make sure you apply to a lot of different places!

I applied to pretty much every care home in my town when I was applying to medicine and only got a reply from two of them.

However, one is literally all you need.

Although it’s easy to feel a bit dejected if you’re consistently brushed off by the places you’re applying to, keep going and eventually the odds will work in your favour.

As a result of one of those care homes replying to me, I was able to volunteer there once a week for a whole year.

This looked absolutely fantastic on my application and undoubtedly contributed to every medical school I applied to inviting me to interview.

Another key that can save you a lot of time and effort is to utilise the unique opportunities you have available to you.

If you have a personal connection to a practicing doctor then now’s the time to use it!

If your school has a work experience program set up for its pupils then be sure to engage with it.

These are the sorts of opportunities that aren’t available to the general public so you’ll have a much higher chance of being able to arrange something successfully.

Otherwise, I’d work through my eight step method for getting medical work experience below to systematically tackle the problem and come out on top.

Get my step-by-step method (including email templates) for getting medical work experience in my dedicated article here.

How Much Work Experience Do You Need?

There’s not normally a set number of days of work experience that a medical will need an applicant to have completed.

It’s more about gathering a variety of experiences that will help colour a student’s view of the medical profession.

That being said, I think it’s fair to say that your portfolio may look a bit thin if you’ve got fewer than two weeks of total exposure in one way or another to the vocation.

This could be one week in a hospital and one week in a GP practice or it could lots of smaller placement knitted together.

Again, quality is more important than quantity here so don’t worry if you add everything up exactly and it comes to less than 14 days.

Ideally, you’ll be able to pair two weeks of more direct observational work experience with a longer term volunteering position or job.

Something where you keep showing up week after week and develop a more long term relationship with your colleagues, customers or clients.

For this longer-term position, I’d try and commit yourself for at least 4 months.

In many ways the longer the better with this sort of thing, so if you’ve got the time then I’d aim for up to a year in post.

If you’re able to combine one of these long-term positions with a good variety of more direct work experience then you should be set to satisfy the requirements of any UK medical school.

Find the exact work experience requirements for every medical school in this article all about how much work experience you need for medicine.

Free Medicine Work Experience Opportunities

As a medicine applicant, your time is in short supply.

Over your year you’ve got school exams to contend with, the UCAT to get a grip of, a personal statement to write and (hopefully) medicine interviews to study for!

With this being the case, you’ll want to avoid sinking hours and hours into searching for the perfect work experience placement.

To help you out, I’ve compiled a list of the best opportunities from across the UK.

Check out a list of 9 exciting (and totally free) work experience opportunities here

They’re mostly volunteer positions with some of the largest charities in the UK.

Larger, more widespread initiatives are more likely to be able to accommodate your request for a role as they need more people to help run the organisation!

However, equally, I think you can get really lucky with smaller, more local opportunities.

If you’ve got a personal connection to any sort of charity, community project or volunteer organisation then you’ll be in a prime position to explore a potential work experience placement.

My dad actually used to help run a local Scout group.

This was after I’d already applied to medicine, but had he been a leader there earlier, it could have been a great opportunity for me to get involved in the Scouting movement and boost my application at the same time.

Medical Work Experience For 15, 16, and 17 Year Olds

With medicine becoming ever more popular (and so more competitive), it’s only logical that motivated students are beginning work on their applications at a younger and younger age.

Although I had medicine as a career path in the back of my mind before sitting my GCSEs, I don’t think anyone in my year seriously started application bashing until at least year 12.

However, this is no longer necessarily the norm.

If you’re looking to get one step ahead of your colleagues, it might mean searching out relevant work experience as a 15 or 16-year-old, rather than waiting till sixth form.

There are however a couple of challenges you may have to face if you’re looking to secure some of this ‘early-bird’ work experience.

For one, some healthcare centres won’t allow students to undertake placements if they’re under 16.

This can make arranging relevant shadowing experiences extremely difficult at younger ages.

Additionally, certain medical schools actually stipulate that your work experience has to have occurred in the last two years for it to ‘count’ towards your application.

This means that if you jump the gun too early, all your fantastic shadowing experiences and volunteering may not directly equate to more points for your application.

Due to the nuance of the subject, I’ve actually written another article specifically to help you if you’re 15, 16 or 17-year-old and want to get medical work experience.

In it, I explore what the youngest age you can do work experience in a hospital is, what age you can volunteer in a medical field and what age you can undertake virtual work experience.

Get the complete answer here in my article all about ‘medical work experience at different ages.’

How To Make The Most Of Your Work Experience

Once you’ve managed to arrange a placement for yourself, there’s a lot more to getting the most out of your work experience than just showing up on time each day.

Although it takes more effort than just passively observing, if you do your homework for your placements you’ll thank yourself later.

Making the most of your work experience comes down to three things:

• Your preparation before the placement
• What you do during your placement
• How you evaluate your experiences after the placement

Before Your Placement

The lead up to your work experience can be a great time to remind yourself of what you want to achieve during the placement.

You’ll undoubtedly have your own individual objectives, but ultimately an underlying goal should always be to help build an understanding of whether you think you’re suited to a career in medicine.

With this in mind, it can be worth preparing a few questions (or topics) you might want to talk to one of the healthcare professionals you’ll meet about.

For example:

• What do you enjoy most about your job?
• What are some of the biggest challenges you have to face day-to-day?
• Would you recommend a career in medicine to me?

By putting some forethought into what you want to get out of your experience, you’ll arrive prepared to explore topics that you’re interested in- rather than having things you wished you asked pop into your head once it’s to late!

During Your Placement

During your placement is the time in which you can really soak in what it means to work in healthcare.

You’ll likely be surrounded by doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and healthcare assistants (to name but a few).

Get involved with any opportunities thrown your way, always be ready to lend a helping hand and just generally try to appear keen and engaged with what’s going on.

The biggest favour you can do yourself during your work experience is to keep a sort of ‘mini diary’ of your notable experiences.

It doesn’t have to be anything complicated, but just what happened, who was involved and how you felt at the time.

Having this informal documentation to look back on will make it a thousand times easier to reflect on your experiences after they’re over.

After Your Placement

The time to truly reflect and learn from your work experience comes after you’ve completed your placement.

Medical schools aren’t going to be impressed by the people you’ve shadowed and things you’ve done on paper.

They’re going to be impressed by how you’ve reflected on them and the learning you’ve taken away as a result.

Reflecting on your work experience is the keystone that candidates too often miss in the excitement of getting to experience healthcare delivery first-hand.

Which is why I’m going to teach you exactly how to do it a little later in this article…

What To Wear To Your Work Experience

If you’ve never worked in a hospital, GP practice or other healthcare setting, a common question to have is how you should present yourself.

There aren’t any strict rules as such, but you’ll generally want to maintain a professional appearance suitable for the setting.

This is commonly summed up as ‘smart casual’ which doesn’t always mean that much if you’re not familiar with what’s expected!

For guys, you’ll be safe with a shirt and chinos, or a variation of the above.

As a minimum, you should have a collared shirt and not be wearing trainers.

A full suit is probably a bit overkill but it’s always better to be over rather than under-dressed.

As a girl, you have a bit more leeway in what is considered appropriate.

Essentially, if you could imagine a doctor wearing your outfit to work then you’re probably good to go- it’s the same principle that dictates what you should wear to a medicine interview.

Avoid open toed shoes and anything too revealing, but generally a smart dress or skirt and blouse will be perfect.

How To Reflect On Your Work Experience

As touched on previously, your reflections on your work experience is where you can earn the real brownie points in the eyes of a medical school.

‘Reflecting’ on an experience essentially just means thinking about what you can learn from it.

For example, say you did a placement with an oncologist who had to deliver bad news to patients about cancer diagnoses or recurrences.

Watching the doctor deliver this horrific news to patients in their clinic may highlight to you the vital role communication skills play in not making a bad situation even worse.

One of your reflections may be that the manner in which bad news is delivered to patients can have a huge impact on their experience of hospital and their opinion of the treating team.

This is where your ‘mini diary’ can come in really handy as you can systematically go through what you saw and draw out valuable reflections that you can use in your personal statement or at interview.

A basic framework you can use is:

Not every heading will be relevant to each of your experiences, but rather they’re there just as a guide and bit of a prompt to help you think about what you saw.

Final Thoughts

You should now be all set to start gathering the experiences and placements that will ultimately get you into medical school!

Just remember that getting to help perform an operation in Costa Rica and working in a corner shop down the road can be equally valuable to a candidate’s medicine application- as universities care about what that candidate took away from their experience, not what they actually did.

Give yourself plenty of time and cast your net wide and you’ll be sure to bag yourself exactly what you need to land an offer.

Medical Work Experience At Different Ages: 15, 16, 17 Year Olds

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The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’

New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought

P atient One was 24 years old and pregnant with her third child when she was taken off life support. It was 2014. A couple of years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a disorder that caused an irregular heartbeat, and during her two previous pregnancies she had suffered seizures and faintings. Four weeks into her third pregnancy, she collapsed on the floor of her home. Her mother, who was with her, called 911. By the time an ambulance arrived, Patient One had been unconscious for more than 10 minutes. Paramedics found that her heart had stopped.

After being driven to a hospital where she couldn’t be treated, Patient One was taken to the emergency department at the University of Michigan. There, medical staff had to shock her chest three times with a defibrillator before they could restart her heart. She was placed on an external ventilator and pacemaker, and transferred to the neurointensive care unit, where doctors monitored her brain activity. She was unresponsive to external stimuli, and had a massive swelling in her brain. After she lay in a deep coma for three days, her family decided it was best to take her off life support. It was at that point – after her oxygen was turned off and nurses pulled the breathing tube from her throat – that Patient One became one of the most intriguing scientific subjects in recent history.

For several years, Jimo Borjigin, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, had been troubled by the question of what happens to us when we die. She had read about the near-death experiences of certain cardiac-arrest survivors who had undergone extraordinary psychic journeys before being resuscitated. Sometimes, these people reported travelling outside of their bodies towards overwhelming sources of light where they were greeted by dead relatives. Others spoke of coming to a new understanding of their lives, or encountering beings of profound goodness. Borjigin didn’t believe the content of those stories was true – she didn’t think the souls of dying people actually travelled to an afterworld – but she suspected something very real was happening in those patients’ brains. In her own laboratory, she had discovered that rats undergo a dramatic storm of many neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine, after their hearts stop and their brains lose oxygen. She wondered if humans’ near-death experiences might spring from a similar phenomenon, and if it was occurring even in people who couldn’t be revived.

Dying seemed like such an important area of research – we all do it, after all – that Borjigin assumed other scientists had already developed a thorough understanding of what happens to the brain in the process of death. But when she looked at the scientific literature, she found little enlightenment. “To die is such an essential part of life,” she told me recently. “But we knew almost nothing about the dying brain.” So she decided to go back and figure out what had happened inside the brains of people who died at the University of Michigan neurointensive care unit. Among them was Patient One.

At the time Borjigin began her research into Patient One, the scientific understanding of death had reached an impasse. Since the 1960s, advances in resuscitation had helped to revive thousands of people who might otherwise have died. About 10% or 20% of those people brought with them stories of near-death experiences in which they felt their souls or selves departing from their bodies. A handful of those patients even claimed to witness, from above, doctors’ attempts to resuscitate them. According to several international surveys and studies, one in 10 people claims to have had a near-death experience involving cardiac arrest, or a similar experience in circumstances where they may have come close to death. That’s roughly 800 million souls worldwide who may have dipped a toe in the afterlife.

As remarkable as these near-death experiences sounded, they were consistent enough that some scientists began to believe there was truth to them: maybe people really did have minds or souls that existed separately from their living bodies. In the 1970s, a small network of cardiologists, psychiatrists, medical sociologists and social psychologists in North America and Europe began investigating whether near-death experiences proved that dying is not the end of being, and that consciousness can exist independently of the brain. The field of near-death studies was born.

Over the next 30 years, researchers collected thousands of case reports of people who had had near-death experiences. Meanwhile, new technologies and techniques were helping doctors revive more and more people who, in earlier periods of history, would have almost certainly been permanently deceased. “We are now at the point where we have both the tools and the means to scientifically answer the age-old question: What happens when we die?” wrote Sam Parnia, an accomplished resuscitation specialist and one of the world’s leading experts on near-death experiences, in 2006. Parnia himself was devising an international study to test whether patients could have conscious awareness even after they were found clinically dead.

But by 2015, experiments such as Parnia’s had yielded ambiguous results, and the field of near-death studies was not much closer to understanding death than it had been when it was founded four decades earlier. That’s when Borjigin, together with several colleagues, took the first close look at the record of electrical activity in the brain of Patient One after she was taken off life support. What they discovered – in results reported for the first time last year – was almost entirely unexpected, and has the potential to rewrite our understanding of death.

“I believe what we found is only the tip of a vast iceberg,” Borjigin told me. “What’s still beneath the surface is a full account of how dying actually takes place. Because there’s something happening in there, in the brain, that makes no sense.”

F or all that science has learned about the workings of life, death remains among the most intractable of mysteries. “At times I have been tempted to believe that the creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure,” the philosopher William James wrote in 1909.

The first time that the question Borjigin began asking in 2015 was posed – about what happens to the brain during death – was a quarter of a millennium earlier. Around 1740, a French military physician reviewed the case of a famous apothecary who, after a “malign fever” and several blood-lettings, fell unconscious and thought he had travelled to the Kingdom of the Blessed . The physician speculated that the apothecary’s experience had been caused by a surge of blood to the brain. But between that early report and the mid-20th century, scientific interest in near-death experiences remained sporadic.

In 1892, the Swiss climber and geologist Albert Heim collected the first systematic accounts of near-death experiences from 30 fellow climbers who had suffered near-fatal falls. In many cases, the climbers underwent a sudden review of their entire past, heard beautiful music, and “fell in a superbly blue heaven containing roseate cloudlets”, Heim wrote. “Then consciousness was painlessly extinguished, usually at the moment of impact.” There were a few more attempts to do research in the early 20th century, but little progress was made in understanding near-death experiences scientifically. Then, in 1975, an American medical student named Raymond Moody published a book called Life After Life.

In his book, Moody distilled the reports of 150 people who had had intense, life-altering experiences in the moments surrounding a cardiac arrest. Although the reports varied, he found that they often shared one or more common features or themes. The narrative arc of the most detailed of those reports – departing the body and travelling through a long tunnel, having an out-of-body experience, encountering spirits and a being of light, one’s whole life flashing before one’s eyes, and returning to the body from some outer limit – became so canonical that the art critic Robert Hughes could refer to it years later as “the familiar kitsch of near-death experience”. Moody’s book became an international bestseller.

In 1976, the New York Times reported on the burgeoning scientific interest in “life after death” and the “emerging field of thanatology”. The following year, Moody and several fellow thanatologists founded an organisation that became the International Association for Near-Death Studies. In 1981, they printed the inaugural issue of Vital Signs , a magazine for the general reader that was largely devoted to stories of near-death experiences. The following year they began producing the field’s first peer-reviewed journal, which became the Journal of Near-Death Studies . The field was growing, and taking on the trappings of scientific respectability. Reviewing its rise in 1988, the British Journal of Psychiatry captured the field’s animating spirit: “A grand hope has been expressed that, through NDE research, new insights can be gained into the ageless mystery of human mortality and its ultimate significance, and that, for the first time, empirical perspectives on the nature of death may be achieved.”

But near-death studies was already splitting into several schools of belief, whose tensions continue to this day. One influential camp was made up of spiritualists, some of them evangelical Christians, who were convinced that near-death experiences were genuine sojourns in the land of the dead and divine. As researchers, the spiritualists’ aim was to collect as many reports of near-death experience as possible, and to proselytise society about the reality of life after death. Moody was their most important spokesman; he eventually claimed to have had multiple past lives and built a “psychomanteum” in rural Alabama where people could attempt to summon the spirits of the dead by gazing into a dimly lit mirror.

The second, and largest, faction of near-death researchers were the parapsychologists, those interested in phenomena that seemed to undermine the scientific orthodoxy that the mind could not exist independently of the brain. These researchers, who were by and large trained scientists following well established research methods, tended to believe that near-death experiences offered evidence that consciousness could persist after the death of the individual. Many of them were physicians and psychiatrists who had been deeply affected after hearing the near-death stories of patients they had treated in the ICU. Their aim was to find ways to test their theories of consciousness empirically, and to turn near-death studies into a legitimate scientific endeavour.

Finally, there emerged the smallest contingent of near-death researchers, who could be labelled the physicalists. These were scientists, many of whom studied the brain, who were committed to a strictly biological account of near-death experiences. Like dreams, the physicalists argued, near-death experiences might reveal psychological truths, but they did so through hallucinatory fictions that emerged from the workings of the body and the brain. (Indeed, many of the states reported by near-death experiencers can apparently be achieved by taking a hero’s dose of ketamine.) Their basic premise was: no functioning brain means no consciousness, and certainly no life after death. Their task, which Borjigin took up in 2015, was to discover what was happening during near-death experiences on a fundamentally physical level.

Slowly, the spiritualists left the field of research for the loftier domains of Christian talk radio, and the parapsychologists and physicalists started bringing near-death studies closer to the scientific mainstream. Between 1975, when Moody published Life After Life, and 1984, only 17 articles in the PubMed database of scientific publications mentioned near-death experiences. In the following decade, there were 62. In the most recent 10-year span, there were 221. Those articles have appeared everywhere from the Canadian Urological Association Journal to the esteemed pages of The Lancet.

Today, there is a widespread sense throughout the community of near-death researchers that we are on the verge of great discoveries. Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist at the University of Liège in Belgium who has done some of the best physicalist work on near-death experiences, hopes we will soon develop a new understanding of the relationship between the internal experience of consciousness and its outward manifestations, for example in coma patients. “We really are in a crucial moment where we have to disentangle consciousness from responsiveness, and maybe question every state that we consider unconscious,” she told me. Parnia, the resuscitation specialist, who studies the physical processes of dying but is also sympathetic to a parapsychological theory of consciousness, has a radically different take on what we are poised to find out. “I think in 50 or 100 years time we will have discovered the entity that is consciousness,” he told me. “It will be taken for granted that it wasn’t produced by the brain, and it doesn’t die when you die.”

I f the field of near-death studies is at the threshold of new discoveries about consciousness and death, it is in large part because of a revolution in our ability to resuscitate people who have suffered cardiac arrest. Lance Becker has been a leader in resuscitation science for more than 30 years. As a young doctor attempting to revive people through CPR in the mid-1980s, senior physicians would often step in to declare patients dead. “At a certain point, they would just say, ‘OK, that’s enough. Let’s stop. This is unsuccessful. Time of death: 1.37pm,’” he recalled recently. “And that would be the last thing. And one of the things running through my head as a young doctor was, ‘Well, what really happened at 1.37?’”

In a medical setting, “clinical death” is said to occur at the moment the heart stops pumping blood, and the pulse stops. This is widely known as cardiac arrest. (It is different from a heart attack, in which there is a blockage in a heart that’s still pumping.) Loss of oxygen to the brain and other organs generally follows within seconds or minutes, although the complete cessation of activity in the heart and brain – which is often called “flatlining” or, in the case of the latter, “brain death” – may not occur for many minutes or even hours.

For almost all people at all times in history, cardiac arrest was basically the end of the line. That began to change in 1960, when the combination of mouth-to-mouth ventilation, chest compressions and external defibrillation known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, was formalised. Shortly thereafter, a massive campaign was launched to educate clinicians and the public on CPR’s basic techniques , and soon people were being revived in previously unthinkable, if still modest, numbers.

As more and more people were resuscitated, scientists learned that, even in its acute final stages, death is not a point, but a process. After cardiac arrest, blood and oxygen stop circulating through the body, cells begin to break down, and normal electrical activity in the brain gets disrupted. But the organs don’t fail irreversibly right away, and the brain doesn’t necessarily cease functioning altogether. There is often still the possibility of a return to life. In some cases, cell death can be stopped or significantly slowed, the heart can be restarted, and brain function can be restored. In other words, the process of death can be reversed.

It is no longer unheard of for people to be revived even six hours after being declared clinically dead. In 2011, Japanese doctors reported the case of a young woman who was found in a forest one morning after an overdose stopped her heart the previous night; using advanced technology to circulate blood and oxygen through her body, the doctors were able to revive her more than six hours later, and she was able to walk out of the hospital after three weeks of care. In 2019, a British woman named Audrey Schoeman who was caught in a snowstorm spent six hours in cardiac arrest before doctors brought her back to life with no evident brain damage.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time for the field,” Becker told me. “We’re discovering new drugs, we’re discovering new devices, and we’re discovering new things about the brain.”

T he brain – that’s the tricky part. In January 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic was surging toward what would become its deadliest week on record, Netflix released a documentary series called Surviving Death . In the first episode, some of near-death studies’ most prominent parapsychologists presented the core of their arguments for why they believe near-death experiences show that consciousness exists independently of the brain. “When the heart stops, within 20 seconds or so, you get flatlining, which means no brain activity,” Bruce Greyson, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia and one of the founding members of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, says in the documentary. “And yet,” he goes on to claim, “people have near-death experiences when they’ve been (quote) ‘flatlined’ for longer than that.”

That is a key tenet of the parapsychologists’ arguments: if there is consciousness without brain activity, then consciousness must dwell somewhere beyond the brain. Some of the parapsychologists speculate that it is a “non-local” force that pervades the universe, like electromagnetism. This force is received by the brain, but is not generated by it, the way a television receives a broadcast.

In order for this argument to hold, something else has to be true: near-death experiences have to happen during death, after the brain shuts down. To prove this, parapsychologists point to a number of rare but astounding cases known as “veridical” near-death experiences, in which patients seem to report details from the operating room that they might have known only if they had conscious awareness during the time that they were clinically dead. Dozens of such reports exist. One of the most famous is about a woman who apparently travelled so far outside her body that she was able to spot a shoe on a window ledge in another part of the hospital where she went into cardiac arrest; the shoe was later reportedly found by a nurse.

At the very least, Parnia and his colleagues have written, such phenomena are “inexplicable through current neuroscientific models”. Unfortunately for the parapsychologists, however, none of the reports of post-death awareness holds up to strict scientific scrutiny. “There are many claims of this kind, but in my long decades of research into out-of-body and near-death experiences I never met any convincing evidence that this is true,” Sue Blackmore, a well-known researcher into parapsychology who had her own near-death experience as a young woman in 1970, has written .

The case of the shoe, Blackmore pointed out, relied solely on the report of the nurse who claimed to have found it. That’s far from the standard of proof the scientific community would require to accept a result as radical as that consciousness can travel beyond the body and exist after death. In other cases, there’s not enough evidence to prove that the experiences reported by cardiac arrest survivors happened when their brains were shut down, as opposed to in the period before or after they supposedly “flatlined”. “So far, there is no sufficiently rigorous, convincing empirical evidence that people can observe their surroundings during a near-death experience,” Charlotte Martial, the University of Liège neuroscientist, told me.

The parapsychologists tend to push back by arguing that even if each of the cases of veridical near-death experiences leaves room for scientific doubt, surely the accumulation of dozens of these reports must count for something. But that argument can be turned on its head: if there are so many genuine instances of consciousness surviving death, then why should it have so far proven impossible to catch one empirically?

P erhaps the story to be written about near-death experiences is not that they prove consciousness is radically different from what we thought it was. Instead, it is that the process of dying is far stranger than scientists ever suspected. The spiritualists and parapsychologists are right to insist that something deeply weird is happening to people when they die, but they are wrong to assume it is happening in the next life rather than this one. At least, that is the implication of what Jimo Borjigin found when she investigated the case of Patient One.

In the moments after Patient One was taken off oxygen, there was a surge of activity in her dying brain. Areas that had been nearly silent while she was on life support suddenly thrummed with high-frequency electrical signals called gamma waves. In particular, the parts of the brain that scientists consider a “hot zone” for consciousness became dramatically alive. In one section, the signals remained detectable for more than six minutes. In another, they were 11 to 12 times higher than they had been before Patient One’s ventilator was removed.

“As she died, Patient One’s brain was functioning in a kind of hyperdrive,” Borjigin told me. For about two minutes after her oxygen was cut off, there was an intense synchronisation of her brain waves, a state associated with many cognitive functions, including heightened attention and memory. The synchronisation dampened for about 18 seconds, then intensified again for more than four minutes. It faded for a minute, then came back for a third time.

In those same periods of dying, different parts of Patient One’s brain were suddenly in close communication with each other. The most intense connections started immediately after her oxygen stopped, and lasted for nearly four minutes. There was another burst of connectivity more than five minutes and 20 seconds after she was taken off life support. In particular, areas of her brain associated with processing conscious experience – areas that are active when we move through the waking world, and when we have vivid dreams – were communicating with those involved in memory formation. So were parts of the brain associated with empathy. Even as she slipped irrevocably deeper into death, something that looked astonishingly like life was taking place over several minutes in Patient One’s brain.

Those glimmers and flashes of something like life contradict the expectations of almost everyone working in the field of resuscitation science and near-death studies. The predominant belief – expressed by Greyson, the psychiatrist and co-founder of the International Association of Near Death Studies, in the Netflix series Surviving Death – was that as soon as oxygen stops going to the brain, neurological activity falls precipitously. Although a few earlier instances of brain waves had been reported in dying human brains, nothing as detailed and complex as what occurred in Patient One had ever been detected.

Given the levels of activity and connectivity in particular regions of her dying brain, Borjigin believes it’s likely that Patient One had a profound near-death experience with many of its major features: out-of-body sensations, visions of light, feelings of joy or serenity, and moral re-evaluations of one’s life. Of course, Patient One did not recover, so no one can prove that the extraordinary happenings in her dying brain had experiential counterparts. Greyson and one of the other grandees of near-death studies, a Dutch cardiologist named Pim van Lommel, have asserted that Patient One’s brain activity can shed no light on near-death experiences because her heart hadn’t fully flatlined, but that is a self-defeating argument: there is no rigorous empirical evidence that near-death experiences occur in people whose hearts have completely stopped.

At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death. “The brain, contrary to everybody’s belief, is actually super active during cardiac arrest,” Borjigin said. Death may be far more alive than we ever thought possible.

B orjigin believes that understanding the dying brain is one of the “holy grails” of neuroscience. “The brain is so resilient, the heart is so resilient, that it takes years of abuse to kill them,” she pointed out. “Why then, without oxygen, can a perfectly healthy person die within 30 minutes, irreversibly?” Although most people would take that result for granted, Borjigin thinks that, on a physical level, it actually makes little sense.

Borjigin hopes that understanding the neurophysiology of death can help us to reverse it. She already has brain activity data from dozens of deceased patients that she is waiting to analyse. But because of the paranormal stigma associated with near-death studies, she says, few research agencies want to grant her funding. “Consciousness is almost a dirty word amongst funders,” she added. “Hardcore scientists think research into it should belong to maybe theology, philosophy, but not in hardcore science. Other people ask, ‘What’s the use? The patients are gonna die anyway, so why study that process? There’s nothing you can do about it.’”

Evidence is already emerging that even total brain death may someday be reversible. In 2019, scientists at Yale University harvested the brains of pigs that had been decapitated in a commercial slaughterhouse four hours earlier. Then they perfused the brains for six hours with a special cocktail of drugs and synthetic blood. Astoundingly, some of the cells in the brains began to show metabolic activity again, and some of the synapses even began firing. The pigs’ brain scans didn’t show the widespread electrical activity that we typically associate with sentience or consciousness. But the fact that there was any activity at all suggests the frontiers of life may one day extend much, much farther into the realms of death than most scientists currently imagine.

Other serious avenues of research into near-death experience are ongoing. Martial and her colleagues at the University of Liège are working on many issues relating to near-death experiences. One is whether people with a history of trauma, or with more creative minds, tend to have such experiences at higher rates than the general population. Another is on the evolutionary biology of near-death experiences. Why, evolutionarily speaking, should we have such experiences at all? Martial and her colleagues speculate that it may be a form of the phenomenon known as thanatosis, in which creatures throughout the animal kingdom feign death to escape mortal dangers. Other researchers have proposed that the surge of electrical activity in the moments after cardiac arrest is just the final seizure of a dying brain, or have hypothesised that it’s a last-ditch attempt by the brain to restart itself, like jump-starting the engine on a car.

Meanwhile, in parts of the culture where enthusiasm is reserved not for scientific discovery in this world, but for absolution or benediction in the next, the spiritualists, along with sundry other kooks and grifters, are busily peddling their tales of the afterlife. Forget the proverbial tunnel of light: in America in particular, a pipeline of money has been discovered from death’s door, through Christian media, to the New York Times bestseller list and thence to the fawning, gullible armchairs of the nation’s daytime talk shows. First stop, paradise; next stop, Dr Oz.

But there is something that binds many of these people – the physicalists, the parapsychologists, the spiritualists – together. It is the hope that by transcending the current limits of science and of our bodies, we will achieve not a deeper understanding of death, but a longer and more profound experience of life. That, perhaps, is the real attraction of the near-death experience: it shows us what is possible not in the next world, but in this one.

• The long read
• Death and dying
• Consciousness
• Neuroscience

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