The truth about courses
Almost every week someone asks me which course they should take to break out of medicine and into tech, AI, or startups. Here is the honest answer. Most people collect courses like stickers for their CV, hoping a stack of certificates will make them look qualified. That does nothing. But a course that teaches one specific, relevant skill you actually go and use is a completely different thing, and I have done plenty of those myself: Python, Flutter, React, Next.js, JavaScript, machine learning, statistics, and an actual management degree to understand healthtech, business concepts, and strategy. This is how to tell the two apart, so your money and your evenings go on the kind that works.
Let me be clear up front, because people misread my view on this. I am not against learning, and I am not against courses. I have done a lot of them. I am against collecting courses like badges, which is what most people are actually doing when they ask me what to take. They want a sticker for the CV that says qualified, and a stack of stickers changes nothing.
The distinction that matters is sticker versus tool. A sticker is a course you buy to look the part, watch once, and add to a list. A tool is a course that teaches one specific, relevant skill that you immediately go and use to build or do something real. The first is a waste of money and a way to feel productive while standing still. The second is one of the best investments you can make. Everything in this guide is about telling them apart.
I have personally done plenty of the second kind: Python, Flutter, React, Next.js, JavaScript, machine learning, statistics, and a full degree in management to actually understand healthtech, business concepts, strategy, and the commercial side of the field. Every one of them earned its place for the same reason, and it was never that it looked good on a CV.
When you are stuck in a job you want to leave, uncertainty is the worst part. You do not know if you are good enough, you do not know where to start, and you do not know if you are allowed to want this. A course quietly solves all three feelings without solving any of the actual problems.
It hands you a syllabus, so the not-knowing-where-to-start feeling goes away. It gives you a certificate, so the am-I-allowed feeling goes away. And it fills your evenings, so the guilt of not doing enough goes away. You feel like you are pivoting. Six months later you have a PDF certificate, a lighter bank balance, and the exact same CV.
I am not being cynical about you. I am describing a trap I watched a lot of clever, exhausted clinicians walk into, because the course is sold to you at precisely the moment you are most likely to buy reassurance. The work that actually moves you is uncomfortable in a way a course never is: putting something imperfect in public, messaging a stranger, being bad at something new where people can see.
The rest of this guide
- What I actually paid to learn, and why it worked
- The verdict, category by category
- The five questions that justify spending the money
- What to do with the £2,000 and the 80 hours instead
- The short list of things genuinely worth paying for
- If you have already paid for one
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This is educational career guidance, not a promise of a job, a salary, or any specific outcome, and not financial or legal advice. Your results depend on your own effort and circumstances. Make big decisions with proper professional advice where it matters.