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Prabav was an intern at the Intellectual Forum in 2024. 

After two years as a medical student at the University of Cambridge, Prabav Santhosh Kumar realised he “had no idea what it was like to be a doctor.” Imagining other medical students might be in a similar position, he decided to find out more during his internship at the IF, when he set out to create a short documentary about the origins of the NHS junior doctors strikes held throughout 2023 and 2024.

Through working on the documentary, he learned new practical skills, including video editing, storyboarding, and interviewing, and he got a closer look at what his future career as a doctor in the UK might look like. 

We spoke to Prabav about what he will take away from the project.

What did you focus on in your internship project?

I decided on the causes of the junior doctor strikes. I think the root causes are a great thing to focus on, because for a lot of people - I mean, you just see it on the news all of a sudden that there are strikes, and you kind of find out what they're asking for, but you don't see what's happened to get people to that point.

Was there anything you found particularly challenging?

With the past two years in medicine, it’s very much like you have this road ahead of you - it's really like this mountain trail ahead of you - and it's really difficult to climb it, but there is a single path that you need to follow to get to the top, and if you really try hard, and you cross all these rocks and make all these jumps, you can get to the top. Whereas this project, it was like I was out in the middle of the sea, and I have to find this island, but I can't see it, and I have no idea where to go. A lot of it was finding my own direction, and it felt weird to not have that pre-planned direction. I think that was something I had to personally get used to. Especially as a medic, we don't really get that opportunity to really discover our own problems.

Was there anybody you spoke to who you found particularly insightful?

There's this guy called PJ, who's a BMA (British Medical Association) rep, and he gave a talk in October or November last year, which, now I think back on it, probably started the entire concept of this project.

Towards the end, he started talking about the erosion of doctors as a profession and wanting to make students aware of what's going on out there. He talked about a lot of the future concerns with doctors and the workforce plan, which had just been released around then. I was aware that he was the BMA rep, of course, so he's going to have these opinions, but in the back of my mind, I was asking, what if what he's saying is actually true? I think, to some extent, that started the project. So it was nice to talk to him again.

Another person was a former doctor called Davina, who has had a year to think about why she left medicine. So she was really aware of the problems that people were feeling, and she had talked to a lot of people about it before she'd come to me to talk about it. It wasn't just her talking about her feelings; it was very intellectualised.

My project was thinking about the problems and then finding the root cause of it, and she had done her own analysis of her experience and what problems she faced. When it came down to it her conclusion was different to mine, but it was really interesting talking about it with her.

What will you take with you from this project as you continue in your medical education and career?

I think it's given me a lot of scope to understand how big the problem is, or how big the issues are in general. For example, the housing crisis has a big impact on healthcare. Once you think about it for a bit, it makes sense, but you as a doctor - I think in the past, especially, it was easy to be aware only of the patient in front of you and what it means for them. But in general, I think doctors are becoming more aware of their role as people who speak out for healthcare in general, with a more public health focus, and I'm glad to have gained that perspective on things.

A lot of the problems in any country are faced by the healthcare system. If you have bad sanitation, for example, it's the healthcare system that takes the brunt of that, and fixing healthcare directly might not be the most efficient way of fixing the problem as a whole. I'm sure the politicians are aware of that, but it was something new for me to find out.

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