In conversation with our alumni: Dr Alice Hoole (MBBCh 2014, MRCP, PG Cert 2019)

Alice is an Acute Internal Medicine (AIM) specialty trainee and has started her second year of training in the Intensive Care Unit at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.

Alice says: “It is a busy and stimulating place to work and invaluable for medical trainees like myself as it better places us to talk to our patients about what it means to be “admitted to ITU.”

Immediately after graduation, Alice worked as a Foundation doctor in Newport. Alice reflects on this year and recalls: “I met some irreplaceable mentors and friends, and found myself settling into my role as a doctor. My first experience of life on the wards was very stressful but also rewarding, and I realised that actually, long shift work and decision making under pressure was really good fun!”

Alice completed her Foundation training and Core Medical Training in South East Wales, travelling to Abergavenny and Merthyr Tydfil for 6 month rotations. Alice says: “I didn’t take a break unlike most of my peers so spent my first registrar training year in Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor which, despite my anxieties about leaving my home, family and friends, was probably the best year of my training so far.

North Wales is a beautiful part of the world, with countless stunning views, and the medical admissions team, within which I worked, was fab. Diolch yn fawr! It was in Bangor that I decided to complete the Postgraduate Certificate in Medical Education, which I have continued this year to the Diploma.

Clinical medicine is a tortuous place for medical students and trainees alike and I think this tortuosity scares many talented and capable doctors away from medicine altogether. I want to use my skills to make learning the art of medicine more fun, engaging and valuable for students and trainees in an attempt to bring glamour and excitement back to the job that we train so hard to do.”

On being asked why she chose Cardiff, Alice explains that “I am half Welsh – Cardiff has been part of my life from a young age, visiting the Welsh contingent of my mum’s side of the family every school holiday, and wearing the Welsh flag with pride as a cape watching the Dragons triumph (!!) in what was then the Millennium Stadium. My grandmother went to the Welsh National School of Medicine in the 1940s and, although we joke about how daft we both are, something must be in my genome!

Cardiff has felt like home from home since those early years and so the decision to attend a Cardiff University open day was a nobrainer. I sat next to a fellow student on a bus tour of the city and immediately got on with them. I saw that people like me liked Cardiff too, so I was sold.”

This is a shortened version of the full article that features in edition 33 of ReMEDy.

Read the full article