Meet the world's youngest medical student!

11-year-old doctor-to-be. Photo supplied by parents.

We all remember the career dreams we had as kids—from singers to astronauts, lawyers, and doctors. It wasn’t difficult to spend hours daydreaming about a future that still had a while to come. But for Benedict Wy, daydreaming is for amateurs.

This 11-year-old Australian boy has not only set his sights on a dream career in medicine, he’s already started taking online medical courses to prepare him for the role! While on holiday in December of last year, 11-year-old Ben stumbled upon the medical education platform, Medmastery, and was immediately hooked. Medmastery is a training platform where doctors and medical students can learn essential clinical skills in areas such as ECG, chest X-ray, ultrasound, and more. Each night, after a long, hard day of sightseeing, he’d log on to the Medmastery website to work through various subjects, take interactive quizzes, and repeat the process again and again until he earned 100%.

“We were pretty shocked when Ben’s mother first reached out to us,” says Medmastery CEO, Franz Wiesbauer. “She wanted us to know that her son was spending hours a day learning on our platform and she wanted to thank us. It was pretty surreal. Benedict became an instant celebrity in our office.”

Described by his mother as a quiet child who likes to read, Ben spends his free time reading about the human body and watching the TV show Operation Ouch—a program hosted by two doctors that's “informational...[and] talks about medical things and fish,” he adds.

Although Medmastery’s online courses and workshops are built for practicing clinicians, our unique, easy-to-digest short courses based on high-quality graphics, break down complex concepts into lessons that even pre-teen polymaths can (sort of) understand.

With dozens of courses covering everything from ECG mastery and ultrasound, to hematology and cardiac MRI, Medmastery focuses on teaching the 20% of clinical skills that clinicians will need to solve 80% of clinical problems. In other words, we cut out the fluff and only teach what is truly relevant for real-world decision-making.

Wy says that the most interesting thing he's learned through the courses is "how infections work and...use the body to multiply...and how the immune system works… like which cells and body parts are used to defeat the normal infection."

His favourite courses were the Diabetes Mellitus Masterclass, Viral Hepatitis Lab Essentials, and Exercise Stress ECG Essentials.

“I think he understands quite a lot because there are the pictures… it’s not boring for him, so he absorbs a lot of information that way,” says Silviane Wy, Ben’s mother.

“I think...the program of Medmastery is very easy to understand. It’s not because he is understanding more than other people [sic]. It’s catchy and it’s easy to remember because of the pictures and everything is so clear. So yes, we love it.”

Like most other 11-year-olds, Ben is still not really sure what he wants to be when he grows up. That’s where you come in. Mentors play a vital role in the development of every doctor—including aspiring ones.

Are you a doctor and interested in mentoring Ben? Please let us know here!