‘I was a doctor – but I quit to become an interior designer’
telegraph.co.ukBen Wishaw as Adam in This is Going To Hurt, we are all transfixed by the terrifying balancing act of exhaustion and elation that is the lot of the junior hospital doctor.
The hit series seems - despite the often grim reality that it portrays - set to draw more young people to the profession.Yet the series’ creator, Adam Kay, eventually left medicine to forge a career as a writer.
And he is far from alone in choosing a new path.Emma Stevenson, now 38, also made that difficult choice 11 years ago. Like Kay, as a junior doctor she experienced "feelings of being a bit lost and frustrated and not necessarily having the proper skills or support to do the job in a confident way.”It had not been Stevenson’s childhood dream to become a doctor.
She stumbled onto the career at the age of 20, following a gap year and a year at the University of Virginia in the United States, partly thanks to her family’s encouragement. “As a girl, when you’re good at sciences you get pigeon-holed very fast as the smart, nerdy one, and get encouraged to go down the path of a career that would use those skills,” Stevenson explains.She moved back to the UK and trained for five years at the University of Southampton School of Medicine, graduating in 2008 at the age of 25.
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