The Healthcare Career Gap Nobody’s Talking About with Dr. Robin Dickinson

When my friend Dr. Robin Dickinson was six years old, she wanted to be a doctor. She considered nursing for about five minutes, until she realized nurses deal with a lot of pee, poop, and blood, and she decided doctors got to skip all of that. She was six. She was wrong about the poop part, but she was right about something bigger. At six years old, doctor and nurse were the only two healthcare careers she knew existed.

That was the whole list. She didn’t learn there were dozens of other paths, genetic counselor, medical illustrator, perfusionist, public health nurse, until her third year of medical school. By then it was too late to seriously consider anything else. It worked out fine for her, but she never actually got to choose. She picked the only word she had.

If that sounds oddly familiar, it’s because we’ve built a completely different system for kids who love tech. Third graders get coding clubs. Middle schoolers join robotics teams. There’s a clear runway from “my kid likes computers” to an actual career. Kids who love medicine get the same science class as everyone else, all the way through high school and often through college too, and that gap is what Robin has spent the last few years trying to fix.

It’s Not a Teaching Problem, It’s an Infrastructure Problem

None of this is because classroom teachers are doing anything wrong.

Teachers are wonderful. They’re just not clinicians, and that distinction matters more than most parents realize. A teacher who has never practiced medicine can’t teach the human body the way a future clinician actually needs to learn it. So even the kids who are hungry for it end up memorizing the parts of a cell instead of learning to think the way someone in healthcare has to think.

Robin knows this gap firsthand, because she’s spent her whole career on the other side of it. She’s a family physician with an MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She ran her own micropractice for seven years, built specifically for uninsured and underinsured patients, and she founded the first free clinic in Englewood, Colorado, serving as its medical director.

She believes a doctor is a teacher first, which is literally what the word means, and she spent an hour with every patient because someone who understands their own body makes better decisions about it.

That belief is also why, when long COVID pulled her out of the exam room, she didn’t stop teaching. She moved it into a home studio instead, and since 2020 she’s taught more than 3,500 students around the world how the human body actually works. She’s not guessing at what kids need to learn medicine well. She’s spent her career watching what happens when patients don’t get taught that way, and she built her second act around fixing it earlier.

The Kids We’re Quietly Losing

Here’s a number that doesn’t get talked about enough.

One in three kids say they want a career in healthcare.

Most of them quietly drop off that path, and it’s not because they stopped caring. It’s because no one ever built them a way to keep going. We’ve decided that’s acceptable for an entire field of interested, capable kids, and almost nobody notices it happening.

This is where MedPath comes in. Robin built it as the only physician-built curriculum that’s clinical from the very first lesson, which is a different starting point than most programs aimed at kids. It’s essentially pre-med for kids and teens, and it covers real clinical-level anatomy and physiology from day one, along with the reasoning skills that actually determine who makes it through pre-med later on.

It also does something Robin never got as a kid herself: it shows students the full landscape of healthcare careers, not just doctor, nurse, and vet, so a kid who’s curious gets more than three words to choose from.

It starts young and grows with the student, which matters because interest at age seven doesn’t need the same thing interest at age fifteen needs. What it doesn’t do is treat a kid’s early curiosity as cute and then hand them the same disconnected science class as everyone else for the next ten years.

Final Thoughts

What strikes me most about Robin’s story isn’t the credentials, even though they’re worth noting on their own. It’s what happens when someone stops waiting for a broken system to fix itself and builds the missing piece directly. She didn’t write a paper about the gap. She didn’t post about it and move on. She built MedPath, and now the kids who once had two words for their curiosity have an actual path to follow.

That’s a pattern I recognize, because I think about it in my own work too. The people who get overlooked usually aren’t lacking interest. They’re lacking infrastructure. Someone has to notice the gap closely enough to build the thing that should have existed all along, and Robin did that for a whole field of kids who love medicine and had nowhere to put that love.

If you’re raising a kid who lights up around anatomy, biology, or the human body in general, or if you know a teenager who’s been told their only options are doctor, nurse, or vet, MedPath is worth a look. You can find it at MedPath, along with Robin’s full curriculum library at docrobinschool.com.

FAQ

What age range is MedPath designed for?

MedPath is built to start young and grow with the student, so it works for kids and teens at different stages, adjusting the depth of clinical content as they get older.

Is MedPath only for kids who already know they want to be doctors?

No. It’s designed for any kid curious about medicine, and part of its purpose is showing them the dozens of healthcare careers beyond doctor, nurse, and vet, so they can make an informed choice instead of picking the only word they know.

What makes MedPath different from a typical kids’ science or biology program?

It’s clinical from the first lesson rather than building up to clinical thinking later. It teaches real anatomy and physiology at a clinical level, along with the reasoning skills that determine success in pre-med, not just memorization of parts and terms.

Who created MedPath and what’s their background?

Dr. Robin Dickinson, a family physician with an MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She spent ten years in private practice, including seven running her own micropractice for uninsured and underinsured patients, and founded the first free clinic in Englewood, Colorado.

Does Robin offer anything beyond MedPath?

Yes. LifePath: One Body for Life is a full year human biology curriculum, and Making More Humans covers human reproduction across every age and body, from a single cell through embryology, puberty, and into menopause. MedPath is her primary focus for kids and teens interested in a healthcare career specifically.

Where can I learn more or sign up?

You can explore MedPath directly at docrobinschool.com/medpath, or see her full curriculum library at docrobinschool.com.