The path to full-time work as a doctor is notoriously long and winding. To find work in a hospital, you’ll need to spend years completing various degree courses, on top of all the on-the-job training and specialist training required to enter your preferred field.

But as well as all of that technical knowledge and skill, you’ll also need a certain sort of personality, and a certain set of soft skills. Fortunately, the qualities we’re about to touch upon aren’t immutable parts of you: you can learn some of them, given patience and practice. So what are they?

Ability to work under pressure

When you’re a doctor, the stakes are high. You have the health of your patients in your hands, and you may need to make life-and-death decisions on a fairly regular basis. Thus, the ability to manage your own stress levels is essential. That doesn’t mean you need to be a master of meditation (though the skill might certainly help), but it does mean that you’ll need to be able to cope with stress. If you get things wrong, then you might seriously harm the patient – and have to contend with their medical negligence solicitors afterwards.

Bear in mind that the early phase of your career, you won’t yet have developed the metal tools you need to deal with the stress. Thus, you can expect things to get better as you go along. Having said that, things won’t get easy!

Compassionate Nature and People Skills

While the pay is certainly attractive, many young people enter the field of medicine out of a desire to help others. And it’s this drive that can help you to persevere when the going gets tough. You’ll need to be able to naturally empathize with patients, and put them at ease. That way, they’ll feel more comfortable describing their symptoms and problems to you.

Of course, you’ll still need to maintain a professional distance – if you get really upset when the patient gets upset, then you won’t be much good to them. You’ll need to strike that balance between empathy and aloofness.

A strong work ethic

The medical profession is notorious for forcing long working hours onto doctors. You might find yourself sleep-deprived, and reliant on self-medicated substances like caffeine. If you don’t like the idea of working for more than ten hours a day, then it might be time to find a different profession – since, as things stand, medicine might not be for you.

Of course, if you lack the necessary work ethic, then you’ll likely be found out long before you set foot inside a hospital: lazy people don’t tend to fare all that well during the extensive university education required to enter the profession.

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