I have to comment on this (but I haven't yet read others' comments to check I duplicate them But I will read them.) I suggest you consider writing some medical/healthcare related software. You are in a such a great position of being a medical professional yet with the IT savvy - from your past life and also from reading your blogs you know your stuff. You could write some genius applications that could make the NHS ultra efficient. It can be done. Don't learn Python - it is pedantic about the spacing and formatting. I suggest you learn Java - now a very mature rich featured language that is cross platform. C# is not mature enough yet and is too tied to Microsoft, though the mono version is emerging for Linux/Unix. Or PHP and the Drupal content management system. Drupal is the free best website content management system. Perhaps you could build some really advanced intranets for the NHS and solve a lot of problems. I'm sorry to hear about your frustrations with not being able to learn due to the paid main job commitments. I share your pain, society and work is too rigid and people are expected to be railroaded into going down one career path. Sure some headway has been made into flexible learning, like Open University, as others here have mentioned but so much more needs to be done. Which leads me onto the need for this flexible learning because I think we are entering the era of hybrid careers. Yours might be Healthcare IT Professional - where you have both the solid trustworthy qualifications, skills and experience as a EMT and and A&E nurse plus you have the aptitude and attitude for IT things. Something that the IT Professionals implementing the Digital NHS probably lacked. Or what about applying your medical and IT tendency and your passion for computer games to working on new games at Nintendo. I think they are leading the way in Entertainment Fitness and Entertainment Healthcare - other mashups/hybrid careers and markets. Gyms are boring, and if all the members used them at once, they'd be overcrowded, they rely upon people giving up. But Entertainment Healthcare and Fitness - combing physical effort with computer games, as Ninendo have done is the real future. Sure the idea has been around in prototypes, but Nintendo have brought it to the mass market. Read theregister.co.uk too. Curious that you say programming changes the mind - where did you hear that and does it make the mind worse or better? And good luck I'd be fascinated to see if you can combine the 2 to make the world a better place. But then I am romantic about problem solving - though this does keep me in good spirits and gives mean to what I do.