Medicine, a secure career?

Recession proof degree subjects:
http://www.studentbeans.com/student-money/a/ten-recession-proof-degrees-subjects3828.html

Annndddd........ *drum role*, Medicine comes in second (below nursing) in careers least affected by the recession! People are always going to be ill I suppose! Apparently unemployment in medicine graduates is "virtually non-existent" at 0.1%. Although this year apparently nearly 300 medicine graduates are currently without F1 jobs (though this figure will probably decrease over the next few months with people not passing finals/not graduating and freeing up jobs and apparently foundation schools are being asked to take on more doctors to ensure that everyone ends up with a job http://www.foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/news/story/ukfpo-update-on-fp2013-oversubscription). Apparently in the future there will be a 2% decrease in the intake of medical students in the UK, in line with future workforce planning (http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20010044) so hopefully there will always be jobs available for doctors (although I have heard that there are problems of shortages of consultant posts in some specialities).

As many people probably know, there's been a bit of a kerfuffle with FPAS F1 job allocations over the last week, with some candidate's SJTs needing remarking which has meant that all the job allocations that were given out last week no longer stand and all the jobs will be reallocated tomorrow. This must be so stressful for all final years (especially as they already had the stress of being the guinea pig year for the SJTs, and many of them either have their finals now or in the near future). I really feel for everyone in this situation and hope that not too many people are left disappointed.

We did a practice SJT question last week (although technically it was packaged as an aptitude/professionalism question as the med school aren't meant to be prepping us for the SJT...) and I got all the answers in the correct order! It's all a bit vague though and the middle answers seem as though they could be mixed around a bit depending on which way you interpreted the question. Who knows though, we might all prepare ourselves to take the SJT and they could change the assessments again for our year so I'm not getting too stressed about it yet.

My younger sister (of 2 years) is currently in the process of buying her first property! She's a nurse and can afford it, but I didn't think she'd be in the position to buy a place quite so soon. It puts everything in perspective though with regards to my own situation. If I hadn't gone back to uni to do Medicine, I would probably be in the position of looking at buying a property also. Now though, I'll be lucky if I'm house hunting in less than 5 years time. Currently I can barely afford to eat. It's a bit depressing. I know that in the future it'll totally be worth it, but sometimes it's just hard seeing all my peers enjoying their 20's and putting down roots whilst I'm still living off my overdraft and finding money just to pay for rent/bills/food a struggle some months. This should improve slightly next year when I don't have to pay the £3000 odd fees that I've had to do this year, but not substantially. Many people in my year come from quite wealthy families with parents who are paying all of their fees and living expenses, and even buying them a house to live in in some cases, but unfortunately I'm not in that position. Being a responsible adult is hard. I really hope that I don't fail med school after all of this!