Question: What do you have to go through to become a pediatrician?

Sarah Clarke answered on 10 Mar 2020:

Hi, good question! So the quickest route is to go straight from school to university to study medicine. A medicine degree is 5 or 6 years depending on the type of degree you choose. You then do 2 years of general medicine and surgery so that you get a good grounding in lots of areas of clinical work. In the third year after you finish medical school you can start paediatric training. At the moment it usually takes 8 years to train to be a consultant paediatrician although they are looking at whether this can be made shorter. In summary, 5 years medical school, 2 years general medicine/surgery, 8 years paediatrics…so 15years after doing your A levels you should be done. We also have to do exams during our training and we can’t progress without them, so you need to be prepared to keep studying after university! Although the career path is long it is very rewarding and you learn new things all the time!