Congress Student Event 2023

Watch back the full student careers event that took place this year at IBMS Congress 2023!
We hear from the IBMS’s own Sue Jones and Jim Taylor, as well as other experts in biomedical science – including Cherie Beckett, Tahmina Hussain and Donna Torrance – as they discuss future steps for biomedical science students.

In Part 1, Sue Jones provides an introduction, and speakers following discuss clinical pathology placements.
Part 1: https://youtu.be/bLbqoX9Hroc?si=hYOacWZuTwVInNze

In Part 2, speakers explain some specialisms that students can explore, from haematology, to clinical biochemistry.
Part 2: https://youtu.be/bLbqoX9Hroc?si=slOhhJ9w-iNc8VLo&t=5405

In Part 3, we hear from Jim Taylor and other speakers as they talk about options for students after graduating, including further study routes, industry roles and even roles within the military for biomedical scientists.
Part 3: https://youtu.be/bLbqoX9Hroc?si=X_LWmcMfmfsrS4DH&t=7966

Lov to see you all here thank you very much for coming to the student session my name is Sue Jones and I’m executive head of education at the ibms so I’m welcoming you formally to the session this afternoon talking a little bit about the session and what’s in it and

Some things about roots to registration because that’s something that people ask me about a lot so how do I get to be a registered biomedical scientist um and then I’m going to do um a little bit more on other things that the Institute do as well so hopefully you enjoy the

Session we’ve got a good really good lineup of speakers for you this afternoon to tell you about all different aspects effect to do with being a biom medical scientist and other things that you can do as well so to start off this is my bit so formal

Welcome to the session and then about roots to registration as a biomedical scientist and then we’ve got a really nice selection of talks and we built in lots of time for you to have a break so that you can Network talk to each other and talk to the speakers so we’ve built

In a half an hour break and a 20-minute break there are no Refreshments in this room but if you do want to go and get a drink somewhere and bring it back that’s fine um and it’s for you guys to get up and walk around and have a chat so

Please use that time time to wander around in here and go and speak to the speakers that you want to speak to so in the first part after my introductory bit we’ve got three different talks which are all about the registration training portfolio and going on placement so if

You just give me an idea just pop your hands up is anybody in the second year at University thinking about doing a placement okay good hopefully that would be useful to you and has anyone been on a placement and come back into the final Year lovely so you can help answer some

Questions as well so we’ve got all of these three talks B around what is the portfolio what do we need to do with it and about the assessment at the end so we’ve got some really good speakers to talk to you about all of those bits of the

Process then in the second bit after we’ve had our break we can Network and chat to lots of people we’ve got four lightning talks about the different disciplines that you can work in in the NHS so we can’t we couldn’t do all of them there’s too many so we’ve picked

Four that should be relevant to you from your second year modules that you’ll be studying so we picked out hematology histology and microbiology and clinical biochemic then you’ll have another break to do some more networking and then the last bit of the day is about if you’re coming

Up to the end of your final year you start to think about what you might want to do afterwards some hints and tips about what you could do to think about um getting ready for employment and then again some lightning talks at the end of the day of graduates who’ve gone on to

Do other things so the focus of today is about being a bi b biomedical scientist because that’s kind of what my role is to tell people about but you can do lots of things with a biomed degree so we want to tell you about some of the other

Things as well we’ll try finish on time I know people have got coaches and they’ve got trains that they need to go for so I’ll try and keep everyone to time CU I’m chairing the session as well so we can finish on 5:00 and you can get

Going so first of all who are the ibms so people get very confused about who are the ibms and what do we do and who are the hcpc and what do they do so I thought it might just be useful to clarify the difference between the two

So the ibms stands for The Institute of biomedical science and what we do is look after people who work in the profession or who were training to be biomedical scientists one of the other things we do is we support accredited degree programs so one of my jobs is to

Go and look at those programs see what the content is see what’s being taught make sure it’s fit for purpose and we do that in a 5-year cycle so are you all doing accredited degrees good lots of nodding good good choice so we look at

That is one of the things that I look after and for our people who are in practice we do lots of things around their Education and Training as well so becoming a biomedical scientist isn’t the end of the career journey by any stretch there are lots of advanced and

Specialist roles in biomedical science and my colleagues look after that higher and specialist training as well so we have lots of support for all of our colleagues who are working in practice academic colleagues and for students as well where the HPC come in is they are the regulator so they regulates 15

Professions to say that those people are safe to practice and they look after patient safety what we are as The Institute is an approved education provider so we are allowed to deliver four different routes to registration so the hcbc look at us as an education provider in the same way that they look

At a university we’ve got to evidence to them how we run in our programs that we do it properly and that they’re fit for purpose as well so we have different routes to registration and that’s what I’m going to talk you through in the second bit of my

Talk so if you want to find out any more information about the IBS is on the website it’s really easy to find the website um and you can find information relevant to students so just to let you know how big the ibms is we’ve got over 21,000

Members and those members are in lots and lots of different categories so they could be students like you they could be trainees they could be people who are more advanced in their career we have a whole range of different people and we actually have them from around the world

So predominantly based in the UK but we do have people from 74 different countries around the world who are members of The Institute and what we do is a professional body is we support all of our colleagues in whatever they’re doing as far as Education and Training and furthering their careers as concerned

That’s our job to promote and support people who are working in biomedical science so we’ve got a range of membership levels hopefully some of you are e student members already could you give me a wave again if you’re an e student member or oh good I can do some

Recruiting so membership have asked me to let you know what you need to do to be an e student member so an e student membership is really cheap and you get quite a lot for that so it’s £12 if you pay as an individual if you want to you

Can be an individual member or you could go back to your University and say if you bull cup load if you tell them there’s loads of us more than 25 of us want to join you get it at £1 so it’s a slightly cheaper price so you could talk

To your course tutors about it or if you want to do it individually it’s a pound a month basically and if you join now you get the rest of this year and all of 24 for £12 so you actually get quite a lot of time so for the end of this year

That will be thrown in free and then you’ll get all of 2024 there’s a QR code and we’ve got it on the stand as well so if you can scan it from where you are that’s great if it doesn’t work then we’ve got the QR code

On the stand or you can just go to the membership section on the web page and you can have a look so anybody who’s doing an accredited degree whether it’s a BC or an msse is able to be an e student member and the application process is is all online if you follow

The QR code it will just take you straight through you can do the application and then once you’ve done that and you’ve done the application to join it will be processed and you should have access from the next working day so if you’re interested in doing it if you

Want to visit the IB stand on the way out or if you can scan the QR code I can pop it back on during the breaks if you want to have a look at that these are the things that you’ll get it’s quite small writing but this is

All on the website so these are the kind of things that you’ll get if you’re an e student member so you’ll get access to the monthly magazine you will also get the British Journal of biomedical science as well free and then you get lots of other things you get discounts

On things as well we do IBS support Hub so Tamina who’s going to talk this afternoon and I are doing some support hubs and they’re based around students and there some things that you might find interesting we’re just starting to ask people what would you like us to do

For next year so if you’ve got some ideas there a 1 hour session on a Wednesday lunchtime once a month and we’ll we’ll do whatever you want us to do if that is helpful so whether you’re a member of Staff whether you’re working in Academia or in practice or if you’re

A student if you let us know then we’ll try and organize a session around a topic that you’re interested in okay so that’s who we are as The Institute who are the hcpc then they’re different to us so as I said before the hcpc is the regulator so they regulate

The professions that they have listed on their web pages 15 of them they look after physios and OTS as well as biomedical scientists and clinical scientists so there’s 15 different professions and the job of the Health and Care professions council is to make sure that the people who are practicing

Doing those jobs are doing it well and doing it properly they’ve had the right training and they know what they’re doing so they’re the regulator so to be able to call yourself a biomedical scientist in the UK you have to be registered with the hcpc so you’ve got

To have done the right training the right degree course and I’ll explain the roots to registration to you in the second bit of the talk so they are the people who hold a register for those different professions and who is on the register and is able to practice they

Set standards of Education and Training and that’s where we come in because we support that through our accredited degree programs and through our training in the Laboratories and they also set the standards of proficiency so anyone who’s did a placement last year will hopefully have been collecting lots of

Evidence for the registration training portfolio and that’s what we use to measure the proficiency so that’s when you’re in the lab that’s showing your lab skills and your abilities in a practical sense so you need both of those bits to be able to register as a biomedical scientist once you are on the

Register you called a registrant so people who are on the register so we’ve got Sheree and we’ve got Tamina who are going to talk to you they are already on the register so they’re called registrants and once they’re on the register they’ve got to maintain those standards so you need to meet the

Standards to go on and you need to maintain those standards to stay on as well so what they can also do the hcpc is they look at who’s on the register and if there is a cause for concern if somebody raises an issue then they can investigate the person as well so it’s

About maintaining standards but really about patient safety making sure that everybody who practices in the UK is doing what they should be doing and knows what they’re doing okay so again if you’re interested in the hcp seeing what they do their website is really easy to find and you can find more

Information so where we come to together is we work on the behalf of the hcpc to check the degree courses that have got ibms accreditation have got the right bits and Bobs in we also have the registration training portfolio we own that we write that I’ve just Rewritten

It for the new standards that have come out so that’s been quite a big piece of work this year so we look after the registration training portfolio and we look after degree accreditation so we help the hcpc to get people ready by looking after that Education and

Training piece whether it’s in the lab or whether it’s in University when you’ve finished both of those bits then you will be able to ask the hcpc if you can go on the register and the other thing that we use as well as the hpc’s guidance and Education and

Training is The qaa Benchmark statement so the qaa the quality assurance agency they have subject uh Benchmark statements for all the subjects that you would study at University and the B Medical Science one was updated this year so we align our accreditation criteria to that to make sure all of the

Right content is in there and you’re being taught the right subject matter at the right level so we do all of that work to make sure that all the stuff that you’re studying is as it should be okay so if you want to be a biomedical

Scientist you need to have both of those bits you need to have an accredited degree or if you’ve done a non-accredited degree you will have to do supplementary education to do the bits you’ve missed and you need to have done the registration training portfolio so if you finish an accredited degree

You can’t go onto the register because you haven’t had the lab training so lots of people do that as their placement year some students graduate and then decide that’s the career path for them and then they choose to get a post in a hospital lab or a private lab where they

Can do the training okay but you need both of those bits to be ble to be registered with the hcpc once you’ve got both of those bits we as The Institute will say yep we can see we’ve got both of those parts and we issue what we call

The certificate of competence you have to have the ibms certificate of competence to go onto the register so once a week my team send a pass list to the HPC and say these are all the people who’ve got both of those parts they will be contacting you because they want to

Register now and that’s how you get onto the register so roots to registration then so that’s what registration is it’s something that people ask me about a lot and they find it quite confusing and say I think I want to do it but I’m not

Quite sure how to do it what’s the best way to do it or if I didn’t do it that way can I then go back into the profession so I’m going to talk you through the four roots to registration that we have so I said that we are

Approved by the hcpc to deliver four programs for roots to registration so I’m going to take you through each one of those four hopefully one will look familiar to you and it will be a route into the uh profession to call yourself a biomedical scientist so route one is

Probably the one your most with because that would be you would do your degree you would do a placement year within that degree sometimes they’re called sandwich because it’s a choice you can choose it’s optional sometimes they’re integrated so if it’s an apprenticeship or if you’ve got an applied biomedical

Science Program everybody on that route will do a placement year so you would go out onto placement into a lab that’s got approval from us to say that they can deliver the training do the portfolio and then go back and finish your final year some students are verified that’s

The assessment that you would have before they go back because they’ve done everything in the portfolio some students go and finish final year do the research project finish off all the evidence and then are verified at the end so we’ve got a talk from Sheree about verification and what that looks

Like this afternoon for you as well once you’ve got both bits you will get your certificate of competence and you can ask the hcpc if you can register route two is where you do an accredited degree but it doesn’t have a placement rout in or you didn’t choose to do a placement

At the time so you’ve done all the right talk components but you haven’t had that lab experience and completed the portfolio so again quite lot students go into the profession this way they didn’t think about it at the time or didn’t feel able to take the placement the

Placements aren’t paid normally so some students say I can’t afford to do that I need to do the degree and then get a job and then I’ll look for training positions so you would do the degree that’s accredited by The Institute you would then look for a job either in a

Private lab or a clinical lab and then you would get your training position and then you would do the portfolio that way again once both bits are finished you’ve had your verification we can issue the certificate of competence and you can ask to register number three there are people

People who don’t know about ibms accreditation and they don’t do a degree that is accredited by the ibms and then they’ve got extra bits to do so if the degree is accredited by us like I said we check the curriculum and make sure it’s got everything in that it needs to

Have if it’s not accredited by The Institute it won’t have the clinical specialisms in because degrees that don’t have accreditation don’t teach them okay so what you would need to do in that circumstance is you would need to send your degree module information to us have a degree assessment to done

Which we charge for and then we tell you where the gaps are so if you’ve got gaps because you did a degree that’s not accredited by The Institute we’ll say well that’s okay but you’re missing Med micro you’re missing cellular pathology you’re missing hematology and transfusion whatever those areas are and

Then you need to contact an accredited program and say can I come and study these modules with you and again pay to do those modules so it takes longer and it’s more expensive we call those topup modules whatever we identify that you need to do with supplementary education

Once you’ve got all of the topup modules done and the registration training portfolio at work then again we can issue the certificate of competence and the last one it’s not really for students I’ve just add it in for completeness so we have an equivalence route for people who already work in the

NHS they’ve got a relevant degree and they’ve got a few years experience under their belt so they’re already working at the level of a biomedical scientist but they’re not on the register so we have a route for them where they can get in and get on the register that way so that’s

Just for completeness so you’ve got all four so important to note so the roal soci of biology also ACC credit degree programs your degree might have both so some universities have both RSB and IB accreditation that’s great if your degree only has RSB and not ibms it doesn’t have the right component parts

In it for our registration process with the hcpc so if it’s RSB accredited only and it doesn’t have the ibms accreditation on it you need to start asking questions because you are going to have to pay to do a degree assessment and topup modules more likely than not

So just so i’ mention it because RSB have only been accrediting courses for about 10 years ibms has been doing it for longer than that and people don’t know the difference so they’ll go to an open day and say is the course accredited and they’ll say yes it is and

They go brilliant lovely I’ll do that degree and then they realize later okay so just to make sure that you’re really clear um and if the degree only has RSB like I said it is likely that it’s going to cost you more money so it’s useful to

Know so if you can spread the word I’ve got a piece of work to do to try and get that information out so that it’s really clear to people the worst thing in my job is people email me in the final year and go I’ve done the wrong degree I’ve

Just realized I’m going to have to pay a lot of money to do more modules it’s not very nice is it it’s not very nice position thems of being in so the more people who know 18 to just ask the questions the better so if you’ve got friends colleagues anybody thinking

About going to UNI try and spread the word for us that a degree that’s accredited by The Institute is the one to do if that’s what they’re thinking they’d like to do later we do have 60 universities that have got IBS accredited degrees so it’s not that

There aren’t many of them that’s over half of the degree programs that are called biomedical science or biomedical Sciences so we’ve got over half of them so there should be one near near wherever you live Okay so you do the registration training portfolio as I said some people

Finished that during the placement year they’ve done everything they need to do and they can have their assessment before they go back into the final year um what apprentices do is do their portfolio as part of the degree so they are in the workplace and they go to

University one day a week normally or they have block release but they’re in the workplace all the time so they’re doing their portfolio work alongside study and fair degree so we call that an integrated placement some people as I’ve said complete the portfolio afterwards lots

Of people do that um last year we issued about 1,267 I think it was reg uh certificates of competence for people who done the portfolio most of those are colleagues in work so there’s placement students and integrated students but a lot of them are people who are in in work

Already um to De to do the training for the portfolio your lab has to have the right training approval so it’s normally NHS Labs but private Labs do have training approval from us as well so if you are going out on a placement year if you want to work in industry and do

Research great absolutely fine if if you want to work in a lab to get your portfolio done you need to ask if they’ve got lab training approval or ask your placement shooter at University to make sure that that’s in place okay so once you’ve done the portfolio everything’s finished all the

Evidence is in you then have an assessment and that’s called the verification that person is checking what you’ve done that you and your training manager and training officer have said that it’s where it needs to be it’s got all the right bits in it and they will check it through the verifier

Says yes that’s great you’ve passed well done sends a report to us the lab sends a report to us and then we can issue um the certificate to you and as I said it’s only when you get that that you can get your um registration and you’ve got

To have the degree finished as well so if you’re doing topup it’s doing topup modules alongside doing the training so I’ve concentrated a lot on being a biomedical scientists because that’s kind of what my job is to look after people who want to be a biomedical scientists but it doesn’t mean that

That’s all your degree will let you do biomedical science is a really good solid science degree and it can take you to lots of different places so these are just some of the things that people have gone on to do that I’ve taught so I taught in universities for over 20 years

So these are just some of the things that people have gone on to do students normally when you speak to them say I like the labs I don’t like being in lectures bit dull I don’t like doing other things I like the practicals so these are the people that were go and

Work in the labs different kinds of labs but they go on to do different lab based careers some people don’t like the labs and say I don’t really want to do that I want to do either further study or I like being patient facing so I’d like to

Do something where I talk to people more than being in the back room and doing the Practical work so there’s lots andot lot of different careers that you can look at from doing a biomedical science degree so an accredited degree by the ibms doesn’t mean that’s the only career

That you can follow it doesn’t mean you have to be a biomedical scientist at all so once the IBS has notified the candidate has pass the verification everything is done certificate of competence is issued we tell the hcpc they say yes that’s fine you go on the

Register and off you go you are a biomedical scientist but as I said it’s not what you have to do you can ch choose lots of different things so today is all about telling you what the different options are if you’re interested in being a biomedical scientist that’s great we’ve

Got lots of talks to help with that if you’d like to talk to some of the graduates who’ve gone on to do other things after they finished their degree we’ve got them here for you to talk to as well so thank you very much for listening I know that was a lot of

Information but it’s it is something people ask me a lot about so I thought it was useful to go through for you so if anybody’s got any questions I’m more than happy to answer them now if you want to just catch me in the break that’s fine as well so does anybody want

To ask me anything before I hand over to our next speakers silence it’s like teaching again I’m not scaring I’m quite nice if you want to ask me anything in the break then please do come and find me um so I’ll invite our first speakers to come up the the slide should

Magically change over yeah so I will invite our next speakers up so while they get organized I’ll introduce them to you so come join on the stage so we’ve got three speakers for the first talk come on come morning so we’ve got CLA who is a Lector

At York St John University for the biomedical science program and we’ve got Luke and Ella who have both just in a placement year in in NHS labs and they’ve just gone back into their final year nearly finished now aren’t you so yeah so they’re doing their final year

So they’re going to talk to you about their experience about getting ready to go out on placement What It’s Like on placement and then coming back so I will hand over to you guys lovely thank you ever so much SU hello everybody good afternoon thank you ever so much for inviting us down

Here today um like Sue just said we’ve come down in little Trio today um so we’ve come from York St John University and I’ve brought Luke and I’ve brought Ella with me um so their ideal to bring down to something like this because I recognize that there’s lots of different

People in the room wanting to get lots of different levels of information out of a session like this Luke and Ella have just spent this last year um following their second year of study completing their training year so so they’ve just spent a year in the Laboratories completing that training

Portfolio going through that verification process and they have literally just this week returned back for their final year of study so everything is fresh in their mind all those processing the thinking that they did about this whole subject did they want to go on the placement was it for

Them how to apply Etc and what the placement and that portfolio experience was like they’re primed to ask lots of questions of later it’s all fresh in their mind and they’re absolutely brilliant and I also think they’re excep brave for coming down and volunteering to speak at a big Congress like this as

Well so I’m exceptionally proud of them so but like I say there’s a lot of different people with a lot of different hopes and kind of requirements and questions for what they hope to gain for today there’ll be a big diversity in the group some of you will have completed a

Placement year being your final year of study maybe even finished your final year of study but maybe others of you are still thinking about that what’s that placement could it be for me what does it look like who will I work with what kind of tasks will I do how do I

Get a placement in the first place what’s the application process like if I apply and there’s an interview what kind of things can I be researching so that I can answer a question really well in an interview situation and like I said I’m only here very very briefly I’m about to

Hand over to these two because they’ve literally just done that process so Luke he is going to talk to you about those very very early stages of that placement position so for me Luke was in my TT group when he entered in first year and one of the very first conversations we

Had was that Luke knew straight away that he wanted to do a placement um and that he’d like to go through the application process so he knew from the get-go that he wanted to apply in fingers crossed he’d get one of those placement positions so he wanted to ask

About how would he apply when would he apply what things should he look look at for his interview Etc he’s also then going to talk to you about starting that placement what were those early few weeks like how did you settle in ETC and then begin in that training portfolio

Some kind of settling things what can you expect in those first few weeks and then Luke is going to hand straight over to Ella Ella was slightly different Ella wasn’t sure at the very beginning if she wanted to do placement and go through into a biomedical science career so Ella

Spent two years Gathering all the information that she could asking the questions of myself as the placement shooter um I tend to bring all the students that have just done placements back into the university and do some sessions with students so they can ask questions so ‘s asked lots of questions

Of lots of other placement students is it for her what does she need to do and you had a great time when you did do it didn’t you and so Ella’s got the other side of this what did it look like during that year who did she work with

What kind of tasks was she involved with um what was a day in the life like and that continuation of the the training portfolio and that verification process so you should get a nice kind of map of that whole whole transition process of going from thinking about it to actually

Completing the placement so that’s kind of everything for me but please come and find us afterwards but in the meantime I’m going to hand over to Luke so hi everyone I’m Luke and I’m a verical science student who just recently returned um from his placement year at Sky yor hospital so I’m here

Today talk to you a little bit about the application process and what that was like for me applying and when I went on to go and do it placement year and also what it may be like for you if you starting the placement and also what it was like also starting the

Portfolio so as CLA said um when I started University I was pretty much dead set on that I wanted um a placement year this was because I knew that I wanted that all important lab experience and work experience that employers would be looking for um once you finish your

Degree and go off and get a job so it was the second year that I um uh registered my official interest in a placement year and then I got to go and write a CV so on the CV um instead of focusing mainly on the employment

History it was more about the skills I’d learned throughout first year and second year in the lab um and those the ones that I could transfer to my placement year and also other skills like communication skills and analytical skills um luckily then I made it through to the interview stage

And then I was able to um start preparing um on the interview and the feedback that I had from my interview was that I did quite well in these areas and that was to read up about the hcpc Healthcare professional Council and how their role embeds into the profession of

A biomedical scientist also of course the ibms and how they as a professional body can help students and um also professionals throughout their career I then went on to have a look a little bit into the portfolio and what I’d actually be doing on replacement year so looking

At those modules have a little bit of an understanding of them then also get a brief understanding of the hospitals that i’ be apping for and their um per departments what different dis disciplines they do and also the different types the samples they receive and also who are their service

Users and and then actually trying to figure out which actually which discipline I wanted to go into so I had a little bit of an idea for my first and second year um years and but I also looked into the other disciplin as well because it’s not always um possible that

You will get your first choice so then luckily I managed to secure a placement and then it was important that I then managed to keep focused on my studies I didn’t fall back on any um second year modules I was important to pass all the second year

Modules in order to keep the place placement it was then that I started a round of hepatitis B vaccinations and this was actually I was able to get on the campus University surgery and also apply for enhanced DPS check which again was organized via the uni and also

Funded by them now unfortunately due to Co at the time and the restrictions I wasn’t actually able to go on a direct um on a lab visit however I’m sure now this is possible for you guys um and it’s a good way to give get familiarized

With the lab that You’ be working in and also meeting the people that you’d be working with and also find out where you going to get coffee from all the other important things like that um and then it was I was able to actually meet a student um who just finished their

Placement year at the hospital I was working on working at so I was able to speak to them and get a good insight into what it was like working for them at the lab and also also have a look at their portfolio and see how they tackled

Some of their evidences and get some hints and tips off them and one of the other things that the um advice was it is going to be long days it’s essentially a 9 till 5 roll so make sure to buy some comfortable shoes okay and so skipping forward a bit to

Actually starting placement so naturally with any job it’s a little bit daunting um had been in a university lab i’ worked in there but I’ve never actually been in an NHS Diagnostic lab so going in a little bit fish out of water but I was able to use that first month for so

To really find my feet and this was added in specimen reception mainly and here this is where all the specimens and samples we be received and this was a good place to start to understand the different types of samples that received in the lab and where they will go off

Into the different sections of the lab depending on the different tests that are going to be formed and also figure out as well the different roles that are going on in the lab such as the medical lab assistants and the associate practitioners and the of course biomedical scientists and what their

Impact has on all of roles in the lab and also of course the wider Healthcare and ultimately patients so then once I had this Foundation I was then able to go off into bit further into the lab and start looking into the actual diagnostic testing of the samples and learn a bit

More about the science behind them and wasn’t pressured to know anything right away as I had a bit of misconception that I would be when I first started this isn’t the case and in fact the the aspects that you learn at Uni will definitely be a good foundation enough

To set you on your way and I was also made feel made free to feel to ask questions um and and this was really good to deepen my understanding of the um the tests that I was working on and the diagnostic testing and how um the results would be um important to the

Clinicians uh and then after this I was able to then go off into all of the different sections and gain a true experience um of what it may be like if I was to go off and work as a bial scientist in the NHS okay so now that I have this found

My feet in the lab and I got a bit of understanding testing it was time to start thinking about putting some evidence together to give to my supervisor and timately the ibms to show that I was competent enough to become a bical scientist so I started this by actually just understanding the

Different modules that there is in the in the portfolio so it comprises of 10 different modules and all going to focus on different aspects of what it is important to be a bical scientist starting from just simply knowing what my responsibilities would be as a bical scientist and then the different

Knowledge that would be required to know and also how this knowledge could be applied further into research and development and to also better the profession uh and then also understanding the different standard of proficiency that was required to meet and also have these in my head as I was

Going through the lab and making sure making sure to take notes where I would hit in the Sops and then put this into a piece of evidence later on and then the supervisor meetings that I’d have there’ be then more focused actually around and making sure I was keeping track of the

Um portfolio and if I had any worries or add any questions this was a perfect time to ask for the advice if I was strugging for a bit of inspiration about how to tackle the piece of evidence or even sure making sure I was even hitting

The Sops and a lot of time it wasn’t actually that I wasn’t hitting the Sops it was just getting it is onto a piece of paper and and they were really good at being able to advise with this so when I actually started the evidence um coming from University um I was actually

Just more familiar with essays so this is how I actually first tackled my evidences um but I quickly found that this you know could become a little bit boring writing essays after essays so to make it a bit more interesting you can do it in a lot of different ways such as

PowerPoints um you can also get witness statements off your colleagues and you can also um just annotate documents throughout the lab that you can pick up such as charts or patient patient um test results obviously blank out any patient ident identifiers and these are a much more actually efficient way to

Show that you can re you can hit the Sops without having to write a thousand pieces a thousand words on a piece of paper and it’s also a much better way to make it more interesting for myself the reader and making it a bit more unique

And making it a bit more creative okay thank you I’m going to pass you on to Ella hi yeah um I’m Ella I’ve just finished my place and I’ve come back to York St John for my third year um I’m just going to give you a bit more of an

Example of what you might be doing whilst you’re on placement and the different types of people that you’re going to be working with and um how you end up going to complete your portfolio and your placement so while you’re on your placement you are going to be learning a

Variety of different techniques when you walk into any NHS Pathology Lab you’re going to see a lot of big scary looking machines and you’re also going to see a lot of manual manual techniques been performed um which you will be learning whilst you’re on your placement you’re

Going to be working with as part of a multidisiplinary team carrying out vital testing to Aid in patient diagnosis so you really are in the center of that patient Pathway to do this you’re going to be liasing with different biomedical scientists medical lab assistants associate practitioners and even

Consultants on a daily basis so that you can carry out your work and whilst you’re doing this you are going to be collecting that evidence as Luke said and this is going to help you to complete your training portfolio just to give you a little bit

Of a scenario of what it might actually be like before you enter the lab you might have patient a who comes into A&E with symptoms of sepsis such as fever rapid heart rate dizziness they might have some blood samples taken by an AE nurse they’re

Given to a porter they come up to the lab through speci reception and up into the labs and you might see that patient is then started on some broads Spectrum antibiotics such as penicillin but what you’re actually going to be doing inside those labs oh um so these blood samples they’re

Going to be incubated on an analyzer that mimics body temperature it’s going to take a reading every 10 minutes and it’s going to detect any CO2 levels that are in the blood this is going to Mark the presence of any bacteria within 2 hours that bottle might flag up positive

You and your supervisor going to remove that bottle you might set up a selection of agar you might do a Gram stain and this is going to help to see what’s going on which bacteria is causing this infection you are then going to take those results to the consultant and that

Then allows them to make a more informed decision about what sort of treatment this patient might be needing that’s going to be a bit more effective for them and like I said this can all happen within two hours of those samples hitting the labs so you really are um in that patient

Pathway uh you might remember at Christmas there was a bit of an outbreak of strep throat which was um leading to some unfortunate fatalities I was actually working in the labs at this point it was um we did really see the effects of this we were working around

The clock sort of getting these tests done making sure we’re getting the results as soon as possible we were lering with GPS to make sure that these test results were coming in and that they were getting these antibiotics as soon as possible to prevent that infection from getting any worse so it

Really do sort of remind you that these are real people real test very real results to give you a bit of an idea of who you’re going to be working with you might work with um Pharmacy Consultants you’re going to be working with different Wards you might layers of GP

Surgeries sexual health clinics your other pathology services such as biochemistry histology um hematology as well as your nurses your midwives and your doctors you really are in a big team to give you a little bit of an example of this whilst I was on placement I had the opportunity to go on

Award round with a consultant microbiologist as well as the pharmacy team and we um we visited patients receiving uh broadspectrum antibiotic therapy and we were able to assess if their current treatment plan was efficient enough or if any updated lab results meant that we could then narrow

That um Spectrum down to something more effective whilst Pharmacy were there they were actually able to advise the consultant on the spot about any do frequency risk factors or medication interactions that that patient might be facing and that meant that that very same day a brand new treatment plan

Could be implemented and again it’s just providing the most effective care for the patient as part of this I was then able to write a reflection and I was able to use that as part of my evidence in a portfolio so as as Luke said it’s very diverse your portfolio doesn’t have

To just be essays you can uh pull different things like this into it so as I progressed through my placement it came to the point of finishing my portfolio and so I collected 30 pieces of evidence all from my different experiences and I put it into that one portfolio

This then demonstrated my ability to conduct myself safely in any lab environment it was signed off by the different staff members that I’d work with to confirm that I was meeting those hcpc standards and once that was done I met with an external V ver verifier who

Assessed that I was competent and then signed me off and once you get to that point you’ve really achieved a major milestone in your career to becoming a biomedical scientist so you might be thinking wow that’s a lot to take in how am I going to learn all this everything is stepwise

You’re not expected to go in your placement with all the knowledge everything that you’re learning on your degree you can take with you and build from there you are going to be trained you will never be left in supervised especially when you’re working with patient sample and that’s to keep

Everybody safe um the most important part i’ would say is ask a lot of questions there’s no stupid questions do your research you might learn a methodology a principle in the lab and you want to go home figure out what’s behind it why they’re doing it what

You’re seeing on those test results and what that means for the patient and in the short space of uh nine months you will be amazed at what you can learn and again another big piece of us is just enjoy it because it’s going to give you an insight into a career that you

Might one day have um and yeah it’s just amazing uh thank you very much we are happy to answer any questions but if not then come and find us and we’ll answer [Applause] later so thank you very much I’m going to make them stay here for a minute does

Anybody want to ask anything now of Ella and Luke and CLA or do you want to just find them at the break and and have a chat any burning questions oh fantastic um what are your plans now you got a year back at the University um

What are your plans for moving into the laboratory after your degree maybe you could just let the students know perhaps how much easier it might be to walk into a job once you finished your degree and so when you are on your placement you do

Kind of create a network um so they are going to remember you um I mean we’ve both come out with sort of assistant jobs so we are going to be kept in the loop if we do we I mean we both want to go back back to where we were ideally do

The biomedical science route um but it does just open up a bigger Network for yourselves like get on LinkedIn yeah well done thank you very much I was I was so ke for him to sit down sorry I no I feel I feel that you’ve

Done a really good job I just feel like youve are kind of edging away but happy to just with the the changes to the portfolio do you go guys need to to make any updates or change anything with the new portfolio coming in have you had your verifications we’ve had ours yes so

Because they had their verifications before the 1st of September they don’t need to so um I did a talk this morning about the new portfolio I was like yester yester it’s all merging into one um so what we’ve done we’ve agreed with the hcpc that as a bridging measure

Anyone who’s doing it this year and will be verified after the 1st of September or anyone who did it last year will be verified after the 1 of September when the new standards come in we’ve got a series of question questions to ask about the new things that have come in

So we’ve agreed with them that we’ll use that as a bridging measure until everyone’s coming through on the new one so there things around um in the standards of proficiency what’s been expanded what’s new what’s been improved increased whatever so we’ve got a list of questions that have gone to the

Verifiers and to any candidates that are waiting to say these are the things they’re going to be asking you about just make sure you’re ready when it comes to your verification for that so everyone should know what they’re doing so they’ll be aware of the new standards

But their evidences will ma to the old 4.3 for five it’s going to be online it’s a digital portfolio what we’ve done now is we’ve mapped them for everybody so in module one it tells you what the standards are so you select your three pieces to map against

Them anymore I’ll look at the room this time instead of looking at there anybody want to ask anything else all happy thank you very much you did a brilliant job thank you well done right and we’re running ahead of schedule that’s always nice isn’t it so

What we’re going to have next is another talk where we’ve got lots of student presenters which is brilliant I’m really pleased that we’ve had lots of people have said that they want to come and stand up in front of you all tell you about their experiences so Tamina is

Going to be coming up with her group of students so Tamina works at the University of sford she’s a member of IBS Council I know her very well she’s very nice as well so ask her lots of questions um and Tamina has um created something that’s called portfolio Club

So for students who are going out onto placement she’s created this thing at University to help them to get ready to understand the portfolio and to be able to go out on placement and know lots about it before they go so so you’ve got four colleagues joining you I’m

Delighted to say do you want to come on up get yourselves organized into a row do you to just introduce and as if by Magic I talk a little bit quietly so I’m just going to make sure I’ve got this can everyone hear me y okay uh thank you for Introducing Me Su

Um so I’m going to do a quick introduction of myself and sort of my background and introduce you to my students um and then they’ll talk you through the rest of the slides um so I’m Tamina I’m a lecturer at the University of Salford and I’m the program lead for

The biomedical science degree apprenticeship um but I like you um was a student uh studying biomedical science and I actually went into becoming a biomedical scientist uh many years ago I won’t tell you how many years but um so yeah I went into a biomedical scientist position um I went into first

Completing a placement so I completed the sandwich year while I completed my degree um did a 12- month placement and then I never left the trust where I did my placement so I stayed there for a long time um and last year I came to the University of Salford uh as a lecturer

So I stepped into Academia um and I’m also the ibms placement shoor so I look after um while I was in the labs sorry my last role was pathology training manager so I did look after my own um placement students apprentices as well as qualified staff members who were

Looking to progress in their career um so at the University of Salford um I created a portfolio club I’m not going to talk to you too much about the portfolio because I know Su has already covered it so I’m going to skip past this slide um but before I do

I’m just going to introduce you to the students I’ve got here so I’ve got Yamin Joy Heber and Cyra who were very kindly volunteered to speak to you guys today about their experience on the portfolio Club um so thank you um so at the University of Salford when I started

Here um I experienced from my last role as pathology training manager um I saw some of some of the gaps um that you know we had when students were coming to join us on placements or even new graduates um and when I stepped into the university I thought this is my chance

To kind of bridge some of those gaps um we already had mentorship groups that were set up so we do have research careers mentorship groups um as well as a group for supporting students to go into medicine and Physicians associate but the one I’m going to be focusing on

Today is the biomedical scientist career support site um which is the one that I lead on um and it’s very specific to biomedical scientists so we have this scheme um at the University um so every University will have a career and Enterprise team where you will get

Support with writing CVS um you know writing your job applications and getting in support for preparing for interviews but when it comes to a biomedical scientist position we are looking for very um unique things and there are certain aspects that are very specific to a biomedical scientist

Career so you can get some generic support at the University and but ideally what you want is someone who’s sat on an interview panel before for taking on placement students and new graduates um so they’re able to give you that um tailored advice to becoming a biomedical scientist so this scheme that

We have at the University um we have an area on teams where we advertise external events such as ibms activities and things like the ibms support HBS um that many of you will be familiar with but we also have uh tailored workshops to write CVS job applications um and we

Also provide mock interview support as well so we have sort of onetoone interviews as well as group um interviews um and we provide supp support for looking um for work experience as well so I’m going to introduce you to the portfolio Club um which is another branch of the biomedical scientist

Career support site um so many of our students are able to um join the biomedical scientist career support site but the portfolio Club is separate to that um and how did this come about um so last year when I stepped into my role in Academia I was already working with practice

Educators um you might have heard of them but they’re looking at really developing the biomedical science Workforce and um you know really developing pathology um and one of the studies that I was involved in working with a practice educator Martin Hicks um was looking at employability skills of

Students so asking employers what skills and knowledge do they expect new graduates to be equipped with when um they come into a biomedical scientist position um as part of that survey we also asked a question to employers that if we were to start um completing aspects of the registration portfolio at

University would they be willing to provide more placement opportunities because we know that there’s a lack of placement opportunities and you know um students to be able to go out in a lab and really develop those skills that are required to work in the Pathology Lab 91% of 43 employers actually um

Responded to say that they’d be able to provide more placement opportunities if we were able to support students completing the portfolio at the University so we launched this uh portfolio Club as a trial in September last year um and yeah I’ve had students that have joined the portfolio

Club and what this involved was introducing to introducing them to the actual portfolio so the hcpc standards of proficiency as well as the modules that are in the portfolio and every time we would meet we would talk about one module uh per meeting so for example

Section one module one there’s a lot in there about personal responsibility equality and diversity and communication um so once I’d introduced the students to the portfolio um they got their head around um the hcpc standards of proficiency and what they meant and I then advised the students to

Download a reference copy of the portfolio I don’t think you can do that anymore though with a new portfolio because it’s a digital um portfolio so it’s have guides okay so sue just said we do have module guide so that should be that should help so I asked the

Students to uh download a reference copy of the ibms uh registration training portfolio and I sent them away and I said to them have a look at the portfolio and see what work you’ve done in your first and second year of the degree and how you can matap some of the

Pieces of evidences from University to the portfolio once they completed that exercise they came back um on one of the dates listed on that flyer and I had to look through their pieces of evidences um and sort of agreed yes you could use this or maybe that’s not suitable but

Actually if you build on it then yeah it would be a good piece of um evidence to include in the Portfolio so I’m going to hand over to my students and they’ll talk to you a little bit about um what their experience was on the portfolio Club in terms of learning about the portfolio requirements um their experience when it came to applying for placements um what their experience was

When they submitted evidence and how uh the process worked with me reviewing that and giving them the feedback as well as how they developed their awareness of hcpc registration and how that helped them then to prepare for interviews and then successfully um securing a training by medical scientist

Position so first up I’ve got Yamin thank you uh hello everyone it’s a pleasure to stand here and speak in front of all of you uh so at the beginning first of all I want to say uh my name is yam obsy I’m a training biom medical scientist at North Manchester

General Hospital in Biochemistry Department uh so first of all I had no idea what’s the portfolio is about why I even need the this but however because I engaged in this uh Club I learned a lot and there was plenty of new information that covers the importance of living a

Portfolio to become a successful biomedical scientist so this club really helped me to understand uh the structure more of the portfolio so as you guys mentioned before it separates into two different sections five module each five modules each and submitting three pieces of evidence that meets the standard of

Proficiency they call it op uh and then uh uh taking this extra mile and taking the advantage of this club I become super confident of myself when I when when I did the placement applications so as they say hard work pays off so uh there was tons of assignments to do

There was uh her a regular session that she set us for us as well as the regular lectures that we also have uh at the same time have having all this is uh is really a lot of pressure so uh yeah I’m really thankful and grateful for this

OPP opportunity to be here because without this uh club and without the strong Foundation that I gained from it maybe I wouldn’t be standing here so I’m going to pass it to my colleague shy to expand more on this thank you um hello my name is joy and I’m a

Student training by medical scientist at Sage Royal in the northern Care Alliance thank you so for my portfolio evidence I was able to use a variety of coursework from my University so for each piece of evidence that I used I had to have an annotation justifying its use as a piece

Of evidence so for example in my first piece of evidence I used I had an health and safety quiz from University in my first year so I linked this one to S so 15.2 this sop is about having an awareness of the rules and regulations and policies on health and safety in the

Workplace and a quiz a question in the quiz which you can see here it had a question about a specific rule that our University lab ADH to which made it which was my reasoning for justifying it to linking to the S&P another piece of evidence I used was

A case study which you can see here it was a case study on diagnos a patient using various results commonly seen in the hematology discipline I linked the treatment part of this case study especially to sop 13.8 this was because using the results of the full blood count looking at the

Blood smear looking at hematinics all of these were absolutely essential to even diagnosing the patient and suggesting treatment for them which is why I linked it to that specific SLP now on to how I learned about acpc registration and how had an awareness of the standards so in our

First portfolio Club session Tamina gave a very informative presentation on the pathways to hcpc registration so very similar to the presentation to at the beginning of today’s session then in latest sessions we learned about what the portfolio actually entailed for example you needed 30 pieces of evidence

And you could do like you could use very different types of of presentation or a poster an essay a witness statement and many more things and in one of the sessions which you can see here we Tamina even organized a fmen reception simulation and through this session we

Were able to practically learn about stem of proficiency pertaining to F identification because there were labels with patient details identifiers on each stamp pole and we will also learn about how to keep accurate records because we had to match what was on the request form see what was under sample and see

If it was correct and it was the correct patient now for how we learned about hcpc standards we had a certain module um in our second year called translational research skills and we had certain assignments about where we had to learn about what the standards were then in our portfolio Club sessions we

Had to apply what those standards were and we’d seen examples of them through Tam’s own experience and we had to look at our work and see where could we apply these standards where could we link them where could we say they were appropriate then Dominic would set us assignments

That she mentioned earlier we’d have to answer certain questions which you can see here questions that she made us um for certain modules then we would hand in our work after we submitted our work she would give us feedback and you can see she gave us comments here and

Comments and she also provided physical comments like writings on our work after we submitted our work we would get feedback and then we edit our work we went through this process multiple times until our work was up to a good standard that we could submit it and this was how

I learned about hcpc standards and gained an awareness of them now hand over to he hello everyone uh my name isum and I am truly honored to be here for the first time as a training biomedical scientist um in the next 2 minutes I will share my journey from the

University of starford to securing a placement at Wen show hospital it is a story of how support and preparation uh can bve the way to success let’s start let’s start with the portfolio Club at Salford it was like a scale building Hub um where I gained valuable skills it

Taught me a lot especially how to collect evidence from my um university experiences as my colleague Joy was explained before uh and as well as it taught me how to prepare for my placement interviews um uh after that um onto my bath to withen show hospital it all

Began with an inviting interview email uh the confidence I displayed during the interview was a direct result um of the invaluable support and knowledge I um I gained it from my involvement with the portfolio club and as well from my participation um in various ipms support Hub sessions like CV writing and

Preparation for interviews uh these resources not only helped me um not only provided me with these um relevant interview questions but as well um it helped me provide a deeper understanding of the of the process um and uh armed with this preparation I was able to effectively showcase my skills and passion during

The interview and it made off I successfully um secur the placement to all students and future scientists um try to to join uh hubs like portfolio Club at your University um uh use resources like the ibms support sessions um build your skills and network um and uh be eager to learn

Everything and from every chance you get it really helps trust me uh I hope my story inspires you uh thanks for your listening and now passing on to my beautiful colleague [Applause] zra hi everyone um I’m Cyra um from sford and I’m in the hematology Labs at

Manchester Roy infirmary I had the honor to join portfolio Club this year and joining portfolio Club really allowed me to understand more about the day-to-day life of a biomedical scientist there’s being a student sitting in a lecture and being told these are tests that performed but physically like emotionally looking and

Thinking this is a patient life in front of me that is something that you’ll only see when you’re on placement or through some support events that we’ve done at the University um although my degree provides immeasurable crucial knowledge it was only for exploring the portfolio that I learned what was needed as a

Biomedical scientist and the sort of character that biomedical scientists that are registered carry and during my time in the portfolio Club it was through drafting evidences making mistakes receiving feedback and then going back to research the standards again that I learned what is truly expected of a BMS from communic ation to

Wellbeing and professional relationships I learned that it’s not just a degree that makes a biomedical scientist it’s continuous character development learnings and CPD reflection understanding the standards of proficiency before I actually went on to placement equipped me to takeit the ground running on my placement because I knew already ways to demonstrate my

Learning through mind maps questions um making posters stuff like that like um we spoke about before um I know about the mandatory piece of evidence optional ones like just going in with a with a bit more knowledge so I wasn’t like a like a little goldfish in the ocean when

I went on to placement um but again I’m only at this Advantage because I went I joined the portfolio Club 10 months ago um so a lot of my evidence was created um used examples of my coursework Independent Learning and through reading the biomedical science practice books or

Through attending the ibms events such as um the ones that you’d get if you signed up as a e student they send you lots of support hubs and events and joining them there was this particularly one at my University there’s a picture just there the Manchester Branch EDI

Event um so as you know um the new standards they have an emphasis on EDI such as recognizing the impact of culture equality and diversity on practice this is something that’s not taught in a degree such as but it’s more of a softer skill that you develop um I understand after attending the

Event I understand that in summary embracing equality and diversity in the in the field of biom medicine is crucial for fostering Innovation improving patient care and addressing disparities to promote a fairer Health Care System but not only for the patients but for those who are training so everyone has

An equal an equal right to train equal right to being examined and such as like now I’m in the lab myself I’m seeing everyone is almost like a almost like a family setup really when you get to know know everyone cuz people have been there for 20 15 years like everyone sort of

Supports each other and I’ve only been at my placement for 2 weeks but um I know I’ve been helped by a lot of the seniors and Co did as in in my own Development I’ve only been there for two weeks um being joining the EDI event and a lot

Of the support hubs at the ibms I would urge any student to just sign up as an e student because it is just a it’s a wealth of information that even not even if you’re just going for a place but more MLA type roles or anything they definitely help within Career

Development um such as you know just before I went into my interviews I had a preparation with Tamina and the portfolio club and um I was advised to research the trust that I was going to so before I go into my interview to know a bit of the background of the trust and

There was a particular trust that I came across who signed in EDI strategy back in 2019 it’s um it’s an agreement between the lab and the company and the trust to promote EDI within the workplace I went into my interview um it’s my second interview um and I IID

Asked the lab manager what their lab had done in support of this EDI strategy that they designed the manager looked back at me with a blank response and I was asked how do you know about this strategy and I said I researched it but IID only know to research that by

Attending support hubs that the ibms had done all through the portfolio Club and the work that t has done at sford it’s so much they’re so helpful for students going into placement or even just MLA type roles and stuff like that a lot of the interview preparation even we have

Support hubs on specialisms in biomedical Sciences if you’re just trying to get your head around um what is expected of a BMS sign up as e student and have a look at some of the sport hubs and finally some advice for placement students or those going into

Any sort of lab sort of roles be proactive in seeking learning opportunities as I said the ibms um offers a wealth of resources and evid and events that can significantly enhance your skills and knowledge take advantage of training programs workshops and mentorships um to continuously learn and grow Network within the organization

And build relationships with your colleagues mentors and fellow placement fellow placement students um establish strong Professional Network everyone in the lab will be willing to help and support you and it’s you just have to be confident and be yourself and be friendly with everyone and I’ve enjoyed

It for the past two weeks um take the initiative to volunteer for TAS or project such as like a lot of the um placement students that have just previously just finished come off on this round of their verifications they’re coming back as mlas as like Bank shifts and stuff um showcase your in,

For Learning and contributing to the organization and be proactive and request regular feedback and from your mentors even if you’re still at University request feedback on some of your courseworks and always look for ways to develop yourself as a as a future BMS and documen your experience

That’s one thing that I’d tell anyone to do is write now whatever stage you’re at document where you’re at document the events document today what you’ve been at reflect on where reflect on what you’ve learned today um maintain a record of your accomplishments projects and the skills you’ve developed from now

During your placement and afterwards even through graduation um and finally good luck to all future placements stay positive motivated and enthusiastic for rep placement there will be times where you’re like oh this is not for me or even if you go in as an MLA you’ll be

Like no way it’s too much too much too much blood but just stay enthus enthusiastic and remember your placement is a stepping stone towards a very successful career it’s not just a tick off the Box qualification you will walk out a complete different person um and make

The most of this opportunity and use it to propel yourself towards a promising career you to all Gather in case there are any questions brilliant thank you so much so all of our student presenters have been absolutely fantastic this afternoon haven’t they so if you’re thinking about doing a placement do a

Lot of the things they’re saying network talk to people get those skills practice things do a bit of research there all really really good bits of advice for you to do she’s trying to take a photo you watching Sara going am I come to the stage I go to the

Okay are we all sorry just bear with us we all like pictures so any questions does anybody want to ask anything of our student colleagues yes yes just a quick one after introducing the uh portfolio Club has there been a measurable uptick of people that they have now got a training

Position thank you a really good question 100% success rate so I’ve only got a few a handful of students here to talk about their experience because I can’t get everyone here to talk um because of the time but yeah uh what I will say is that those students who went

Above and beyond and took part in every extracurricular activity in the portfolio Club taking part in the interprofessional education events um attending all the mentorship workshops everything those students were the one that were able to secure placements I would say it was really competitive this

Year um because of the fact that we had so many students that were taking part in these activities um to measure success we’ve had employer feedback um so I’ll be I’ll be looking to publish some of this um once I’ve got more data to work with um

Because we’ve used this as a trial so we’re going to be looking at developing this now and actually embedding it in um you know not just um as a oneoff because we wanted to check first what the success was like um but we’ve had feedback from the employers saying that

There was a clear distinction between those students who had taken part in portfolio club and the extracurricular activities and those who hadn’t just by answering questions and you know the students they they knew their stuff before they went in um and you know these are fantastic bunch of students

But I would urge everyone to try and take up as many of these um opportunities as possible and really put yourself out there to make sure you stand out employeers have also said to me that it’s going to be harder next year now um to select the students if

This is what we’re going to be doing we’ve set the bar high so thank you any more questions can I just say as well some of the stuff that t is doing is really really good and what we’ve both said is we want everybody to be able to benefit

From it so academic colleagues will probably be in touch to say we’re going to share some of this good practice because they’re all things that other people can replicate now that we can be online and we could do things on zoom and on teams we’d really like to be able

To offer things that we can host at The Institute that people like to mea can leave but everybody can access from different universities so we are going to work towards that sorry there was a hand went up at the back was it who wanted to ask if she going

Shy what did you to do you give help with verification that’s one for theum yeah so when it comes to the verification it it will be the people in your workplace that would do that so Shere is going to talk about verifications next but you’ll have in the workplace you’ll have a

Training manager and a training officer so everybody who goes on placement will have someone associated with them that’s going to be help helping them and that’s what we always advise at The Institute so when you’re coming towards the date once you’ve got your date practice just take people around students use each

Other so when I used to work with with CLA CLA does a lot with students buying up and mentoring each other so on the placement you’ll probably be with some fellow students take each other around and do the lab tour bit in practice so most of it is practiceing gaining

Confidence isn’t it so your workplace should help you with that um to get ready for the verification but a really good question and I did want to add something about the portfolio Club as well so a couple of weeks weeks ago we held an employer engagement event at the

University so we had a lot of our employeers attend the event and give us feedback um and one of the questions we asked was that given that the portfolio Club has been really successful uh would it be really helpful if we got all the students to sort of map the content that

They’re learning at University to the portfolio already and you know it just gives them that stepping stone but actually the feedback I got from employers was no keep it as an extra curricular activity because that’s what helps uh placement providers select the student students that interviews whereas

If you were getting all the students to do the same thing what what’s different um so again this come back to taking up those opportunities when they become available at the University um regardless of whether it’s portfolio club or not but whatever mentorship scheme you can join and whatever event

You can join that kind of helps you develop these skills um it’s not just about being in the lab as well but it’s things like um SRA mentioned earlier about soft skills so interpersonal skills teamworking communication leadership all those kind of things even if you didn’t want to become a

Biomedical scientist these still contribute towards your development thank you okay I think we’re perfect on time one more yeah do you recommend to do the portfolio during the placement or after finishing univers really good question placement is better because you’re ready to register as soon

As you graduate and you will walk into a job so what everybody has said who started a placement is it’s like a one-year interview if you like them and they like you they’ll try and keep um if you were looking for a job after graduation everybody else from every

University is as well so there’s 60 courses that have students finishing every year that have got ibms accreditation and you’re all competing for the same jobs so for the workplace it’s much easier for them to take someone who’s had the training and is’s ready to then go on shifts and that kind

Of thing so they prefer students with placements but they are competitive to get so what like if You’ got Masters um you still need to have the right degree so the BSC is the important bit so Master’s necessarily a specialist normally so if you have an ibms accredited Masters but not un accredited

BSC you’ll probably still have gaps so the Masters doesn’t get you on the register only the portfolio gets you on register okay we ready to move on to our next one and by the way CRA if you don’t want to be a scientist you should go into marketing a brilliant job at student

Than okay our last speaker in this little session before we have a break you can stretch your legs go and have a wand to go and get a drink um is Shere so Shere you want to come and join me um so sherei is a microbiologist by trade

Aren’t you you work in micro absolutely um and shar’s got really interesting um perspectives on the verification process having been verified yourself uh is an active verifier and also teaches at a local University as well so talks to students before their placements and things as well so Shere is going to talk

To you about that experience of the verification so that’s the assessment that you get at the end of the portfolio hi everyone um thank you sue um I’d just like to plug a couple of hashtags there um please do tweet about today # ibms Congress 2023 um you’ve heard the word networking

Throughout the session so far today networking is absolutely key uh and that’s perhaps where ibms chat comes in this is an ibms initiative meets on the first Wednesday of every month um it’s on X or Twitter as most of us know it as um and it’s a fantastic opportunity to

Network with like-minded professional like yourself uh from students to laboratory professionals lecturers uh we once had somebody from overse joining me on the chat so really really good opportunity there so just a couple of uh hashtags for you so Tamina wasn’t too happy about dropping uh

Her um how we say time in years as to when her verification was um I will tell you this was me six years ago so this is just uh an excerpt from an article I wrote for the ibms quite recently and I’m just going to read that out to you

So just think about how you can relate to what I’m saying maybe in your examinations you might have done recently at University or you’ve got exams to come heart pounding stomach churning Palms sweating the fight or flight response it’s the day of my ibms registration training portfolio verification and I’m so

Nervous I know I know my stuff I’ve worked hard to compile my evidence and map it against the necessary hcpc standards of proficiency I’ve rehearsed and rehearsed my laboratory tour I’m just so nervous I just hope I can keep my nerves in check and get through my

Verification can we relate to that exams maybe interviews yeah absolutely and I can as well as a verifier I absolutely know what it’s like to be sitting in that position as do many other verifiers so yes it might be a bit of a daunting process but it really needn’t be and my

Talk today over the next 20 minutes that reminds me I forgot to start the timer but I’m sure Su will tell me to stop talking when I need to um I hope to demystify a little bit of the scariness of a verification and you might start thinking exams exams but it’s really not

It’s absolutely a two-way process so we’ve heard a little bit about where verification falls into the process of becoming a registered bi medical scientist so you need the right academic qualifications that might be topups or it might be an accredited I ibms accredited degree and this might be

Ongoing so you might be doing your verification during your placement year or it may well be in the workplace after your degree you’ve got your Clinical Laboratory training and this is in an ibms approved training laboratory and you’ve got the ibms registrating registration training portfolio and then you’ve got

Verification so you arrive at verification day and whether this takes place virtually because of course the ibms offer this process virtually now as well or whether it’s face to face it will follow Loosely the same sort of format so you’ll have introductions so this will be the external verifier this

Will be your training officer so you heard from some of the students who mentioned their training officers and this will be of course with yourself as the candidate there will then be an informal interview with the candidate and training officer the portfolio verification itself and I’ll come to

That later as to whether that takes place there and then on that day or beforehand if that’s virtually the tour of the laboratory an optional meeting between the verifier and the training officer and then then of course the feedback and the outcome at the end of the verification so introductions for myself

I like to use this as reassurance I’ll introduce myself to the candidate and to the training officer I’ll try to set the scene for the day so a little bit about the structure as to what to expect um I’ll try to keep things light-hearted so

Have you got a bottle of water with you just in case you need to take a little sip as you’re going along and I’ll say about taking notes so I’m very old school I like to scribble things along as I’m going um and that just helps me as the verifier compile my

Report at the end so I’ll say don’t worry if I’m not giving eye contact it’s absolutely fine and that there’ll be question and answer throughout so I like it to be very much a two-way process in terms of dialogue and I find that if it becomes a little bit like that hopefully

That reassuring process means that I absolutely get the best out of the candidate on the day because with course we’re just spending a couple of hours together so you’ve noticed that I’ve put interview in inverted commas and it is termed an interview but I like to just

Phrase it as more of a two colleagues sitting in a room or sitting behind a PC getting to know each other I just want to hear all about your journey your training experience as a candidate um of course I’ve got a couple of questions that I need to ask in order to satisfy

The ibms verifier report but it’s more an icebreaker again you’ve got that word there reassurance so really I do truly want to get the best out of the candidate on the day and ultimately we want you to pass if you’re ready so some of the questions are

Necessary um some of them I’ll ask and I’ll ask them every single time and that’s just to satisfy me as the verifier that you absolutely do meet the necessary hcpc standards of proficiency but also because I’m a professional as well I’m absolutely interested in what you’re doing so I’ll say what’s your

Favorite piece of evidence that you completed what was the hardest piece of evidence and and how did you maybe overcome that struggle to compile that piece of evidence I’ll ask about who chose the pieces of evidence was it a little bit from University was it a little bit from

The training officer a bit of a two-way process you had this Niche idea and it was embedded the induction process in your workplace because of of course I did mention that these Laboratories they must be ibms approved to provide the high quality training that the Institute require for you to become biomedical

Scientists so I’m going to probe a little bit about the laboratory and just ask about that training process there I’ll also ask about the access to study space and resources because again that all feeds into the support that you provided during your placement or during your training

Experience we then move on to the portfolio verification now if this portfolio verification is face to face so I will travel to a laboratory then this will take place largely on the day it does say approximately 90 minutes but a lot of the verifications at the moment are

Virtually and this is fantastic because it means if a student in Manchester asked for a verification and I’m based in essics then yep no worries I can do that I don’t need a whole day off work I can just set aside the time receive the portfolio about a week beforehand and do

That in my own personal time and I find that me that fits in quite nicely so this is portfolio scrutiny and the new version 5.0 of the portfolio should make it a little bit easier for verifiers um but in this process what I’m doing is truly looking to see do you

Meet the necessary hcpc standards of proficiency I’ll also think about some areas of strength so in the verif ver report I’m asked to comment on some areas of best practice and I might want to take those away to some of the students and some of the uh trainees

That I work with in the laboratory in which I do and I might think about some areas of improvement and this not doesn’t necessarily mean the portfolio is a faou it might just mean a little bit of feedback for next time for future candidates or future information for

Yourself as the candidate that you can go on to and and build upon we then move on to the laboratory tour and again we’ve got this in two different ways so face to face on site I’ll physically be walking around with the candidate through the areas of the

Laboratory in which they’ve trained in covering facilities equipment environment and basic knowledge so this is you practicing as a biomedical scientist on day one of your career and can you do this safely and within the hcpc standards of proficiency again I’ll take notes and this really does help me in terms of

Compiling my verifier report and I’ll also look at the training environment and different notice boards so I will ask questions throughout and this is actively encouraged and I find it does allow for that dialogue and after a while you’ll find that the candidate does relax a little bit um and again some questions

That I always like to ask security so you’ve swiped in to come to work and someone’s trying to duck in behind you and you don’t know who they are can you practice safely and be able to say sorry excuse me can I just ask who you are oh

Yeah I forgot my badge blah blah blah you know can you protect patient confidentiality and adere to the security of the laboratory setting I’ll ask about health and safety so working with chemicals hand washing it might sound really basic but do you know when to wash your hands do you know how to

Handle a spillage and what about a highrisk sample you may not necessarily know precisely the intricacies of handling such a sample but you know who to ask and that’s the main thing maintaining equipment so perhaps you’ve learned to use a particular analyzer what do you do to know that the analyzer

Is working as it should and hopefully on your degrees you’re learning a little bit about quality control so I might ask a little question about do you run any quality controls to know the machine is working as it should and I might ask about pre-analytical checks and you’ve

Learned a little bit about that today so that’s as basic as is the sample labeled correctly is it the right sample there’s then an opportunity for myself as the verifier to meet with the training officer either to discuss any areas of best practice or any areas of improvement perhaps I might like to

Raise an issue or a concern but of course I did say this is optional so if it’s not required we can then progress to the outcome and what I’ll say here is when I do verifications I always like to give the candidate their outcome on a

Onetoone basis and I can promise you in that moment when I tell the candidate that they’ve passed I absolutely feel as high as you feel in that moment to be able to tell a candidate they’ve passed and they can progress to their next step of their career is so

Rewarding so we’ve got two outcomes as you can see a successful verification or a pass or an unsuccessful or a fail but that doesn’t mean things stop there it’s very much a dialogue a conversation between the training officer between the Institute to find out where the gaps are

It might mean some additional evidences required or it might mean a full verification is required but it’s absolutely not slamming the door on progression so feedback feedback is so important and you heard from one of the students before about CPD so CPD is so important for myself as a verifier and a hcpc

Registered biomedical scientist but the verification itself is CPD for yourselves as the candidate for your training officer and for myself as the verifier so we’re all looking to gain from this process I’ll comment on some of the general comments of the portfolio was it nicely laid out was it easy to

Read could I clearly see where the standards of proficiency have been met I’ll list some of the uh areas of strength so particular pieces of evidence that I really liked and maybe some that needed a little bit more Improvement or refinement for future candidates but still absolutely met the standards of

Proficiency I’ll comment a little bit about the tour and the content and this is largely useful for the training officer and future candidates that come along and then I’ll be very clear about what happens next because of course you’re all itching to get on the register but it’s knowing what happens

Next and how can I do that so you’ve heard about the certificate of competence today so you’ve got a successful verification or a pass the verifier report and that’s what I will comply and send to the ibms within seven working days Laboratory feedback so this is from the training

Laboratory and then you’ve got the academic qualifications and this might be in real time for example if you’re already working in the workplace and the degree is completed or this might well be another year after your placement if it’s a placement that you’re undertaking you’re then issued with the certificate

Of competence and then you can look at hcpc registration so there a little bit of a Whistle Stop tour about verif ification and I know we’ve got a break coming up so I’m more than happy to take any questions but I am around for the rest

Of the day and I’ll be sat at the front in the striped shirt so please do come and approach me uh please do use the hashtags uh Twitter is well X um is really useful and has been really useful for myself as I’ve progressed throughout my career so if you’re looking to

Network with any or you think of a question later on when you’re catching the coach home uh just drop a tweet in the ibms there um and hopefully we can answer any of your questions thank [Applause] you thank you very much does anyone have any questions they’d like to ask Shere before week

Break yeah Jo um what are General things that we know a common pattern or if it’s a common patter in have been successful but that um I just repeat the question so Joy just asked is there anything different unique special about the ones that are successful at verification for me it’s where the

Standards of proficiency have been clearly hit and I know with version 5.0 that will be uh a little bit easier for me as a verifier to depict um not necessarily spoon feeding me but making all of the evidence available and clear um so evidence that clearly says this

Meets standard blah blah uh feedback where feedback is absolutely clear and this might be as simple as a different colored pen um and the training officer might say but what about this and then the candidate’s written underneath oh okay didn’t think about that and here’s

My answer um and I know when I was training I wanted all of my evidence pristine I didn’t want any hand Retton if I needed to print it again I didn’t want to make a typo but this is what we want to see we want to see that dialogue process

Between yourself as the candidate or the student or the training biomedical scientist and the training officer so that the training officer can give appropriate feedback but you’ve absolutely got a proactive approach to learning and taking on board feedback and then using that um so variety feedback annotation uh so we’ve heard about a

Different um type of evidence so essays but we want to move away from essays we want to move away from witness statements so perhaps doing a piece of work and then lifting It Up by annotating it and then for me as a verifier although I’ve got the chat to

De to clearly understand that it’s original and that it’s your own work annotation really helps me to see that it’s your own work that you’ve produced in the laboratory and it’s not um taken from a textbook so I can really see your understanding so I suppose those are the

Main things Sue is there anything Tamina anything you’d want to add as a verifier I want to know how you know how the new um digital portfolios that have you got any ideas of kind of evidences that we can be using that to our advantage I’ve got a few um I just

Wondered whether anything like to share with students here um things that they can be thinking about so I’ll say one piece of evidence that I did on a very recent verification um and I hope it will fit in nicely with uh the uplifted hcpc standards of proficiency uh but also the new 5.0

Portfolio and this was regarding equality and diversity and this particular student had absolutely lived and breathed equality and diversity and they listed uh some of the things in the laboratory uh that might mean they need to consider how they work with different colleagues and it was things as basic as

Visual so wearing spectacles so what sort of allowances might they as an individual so it’s really really personal what might they need to make for their colleagues what about a colleague that is in a wheelchair but what about a colleague that has autism or some of the characteristics that maybe we don’t

Always think about so I could absolutely see that they’d met those standards and the new standards actually because they showed how they applied it in day-to-day practice so that’s a piece of evidence that I’ll definitely be looking out for and and Advising any students that I

Teach in the future yeah yeah I would agree it’s about applying it to what you do so it’s about something that you talking about about how are you using that in your practice because the standards are know all about demonstrating something not just knowing about it I think there’s one more um I’m

Interested in uh the emphasis that appr on moving away from the essay type and stuff and being original how far can you take it for example if I have demonstrated and taken a video of myself talking to a colleague over a topic could I have a link of a little video or

Is it taking me too far yeah no so the digital portfolio can accept lots of different file types and videos are okay what we said is just think about the verifier so they’ve got 90 minutes to look at the whole portfolio so if you video a half an hour conversation

They’re not going to be able to watch it all so using it if you want to do a Blog Vlog something like that tell us that you’ve done something absolutely fine we just think about the time it will take someone to get through so the more Innovative people can be the better each

Module will now have a mandatory piece so we will tell you what that piece of evidence needs to be for the other two you choose you can be as inventive as you like and the new system will accept lots of different file types I I’d add

That I would love that as I say but but keep it brief um as a verifier who tries to do as many verifications as I can that meets in you know my personal life my professional life um I see a lot of evidence um some it’s very difficult to

Think outside of the box but if you can provide something that’s original and unique then absolutely because I might not have seen it before and it it just keeps me really engaged as well for this part of the presentations we’ve got four graduates um who work in a pathology discipline so when you’re

Doing your degree you’ll have specific modules on the clinical specialisms so we’ve got four talks they’re just 10 minutes each and again we’re going to have a break after that so you can go and ask those people questions if you’re interested in one of the subject areas

So the first one is Hassan um Hassan please come on up so Hassan graduated five years ago um having done a placement and he works in hematology so Hassan’s going to talk to you about working in the hematology lab in the NHS hi good afternoon everyone hope

You’re all right uh so my name is Hassan I’m a biomedical scientist working in hematology blood transfusion at bzi hospital I’m going to give you a little bit of a rundown of some of the tests we do uh some of the disorders we’re focused on in hematology blood

Transfusion uh and then we’ve got a little interesting case study just to illustrate everything and tight nicely together um so I work in a smallish laboratory it’s a general hospital and even though it’s you know just smallish we get about 2,000 samples a day in hematology Lear uh and these come from

Within the hospital so our emergency department or all the different Wards but they also come externally or the GP surgeries that surround us uh and it can also come from nurses that are going to patients houses May to bleed them if they’re not able to get to the

Hospital um because it’s a general hospital uh I get to work in all the different disciplines that fall under hematology blood transfusion so you’ve got hematology uh to do with analyzers and even looking down the microscope potentially you’ve got coagulation to do with making sure patients can clot properly they’ve got blood transfusion

As well if they need products potentially at the end end of the day part of being a BMS is all about ensuring that whoever’s requested those tests they can get those results back especially if they need them so what we’re really focused on in hematology is blood cells that been made

In the bone marrow so I’ve got three of the main ones here for you so we’ve got platelets which are essential for clotting the blood when maybe patients had an injury we’ve got white blood cells these are the cells that rise up to fight against infections for yourself

And you’ve got red blood cells quite selfless the Pack full of something called hemoglobin and it carries oxygen around to your organs that might need it some patients say they’ve had a particularly nasty bleed um and they need to increase their red blood cell count or some hemoglobin we might be

Able to support this in the wave of transfusion and this is the analyzer we used to uh get some information about the size of these blood cells by firing a bit of light at them um and we can also combine this with some staining to figure out what the different blood cells

Are the other thing we look at is blood clotting so whether a patient if they get an injury they can actually clot properly um and we can actually do this outside the body so we’ve got a little diagram here to illustrate this um we’ll

Add a bit of the patient spun blood to a little cuet and a metal ball will moves side to side and when we had different reagents we’re actually able to start the clotting process outside the body um and we’ll actually measure that time it takes for them to for that ball

To stop moving and that’s the time to clot it’s a very important test looking for blood clotting because there’s a lot of patients on things called anticoagulants you might have hear the more commonly known as blood finers and it’s important that we make sure these patients are dose correctly

So you know they’re not receiving too little not too much we also have to think about patients with bleeding disorders so in the clotting process there’s key components that some patients might be missing and it means that they’re unable to clot properly and so for these patients actually we can

Look at the missing jigsaw piece I could potentially replace it in the form of a drug and then looking down the microscope to support some of our analyzer results I’ve just got some of the things we might focus on um so one of the things we look at is leukemias

These are Cancers originate in the bone marrow so cancers the blood and and these are things that they shouldn’t be in the bone marrow or the blood to begin with OR sometimes they’ve actually left the bone marrow when they were too immature to do so another thing is we look at patient

Who have inherited different blood cell disorders maybe from parents and so I’m sure you’ve all heard of CLE cell disease blood cells should be usually be nice and round but actually you can look here and you can see how elongated and sharp it is so if this was a patient

That we didn’t know anything about or you know first presentation um we’d have to do further test to confirm you know whether this sick or Sol disease or not and then we move on to the more Uncommon things um so here on the left we’ve actually got a picture of nutrifil these

Are white blood cells that fight bacterial infections for you and if you look carefully you’ll see some rodlike inclusions there in those neutrals and they’re actually bacteria so this was a patient we had with overwhelming infection seen something like this obviously can prompt you know for them to have antibiotics or you know

Something like that and then we get into the really exotic things not things we’ll see on a daily basis uh but we’re talking about blood parasites so on the left there you’ve got what’s called micro area it’s essentially a bloodworm and you can see how big that is even

Though you’re looking down the microscope because if you try to look at those individual blood cells you can see they all clumped together so that can give you an idea of how big it is actually compared to the other image and and then on the right we’ve got pictures sarial

Parasites um we can use a lot of interesting features about these parasites to figure out what species we’re looking at uh cuz this can affect the treatment of the patient so even the fact that there’s two of them in the same blood cell might be one little uh

Part of the puzzle for us so I’ve given you a little introduction to hematology and now I just want to run you through an interesting case where we have to use everything to come to the conclusion so a midwife sent us a sample in the in the labs and they’re concerned

That baby had yellowing skin and a bit of yellowing in the eyes they concern about something called jaundice so red blood cells um they break down after 120 days it’s a perfectly normal process and we try to recycle as much as it can so things like iron uh another natural product that’s

Made from this is called B Rubin uh and usually we can easily get cleared of it but if this process is happening too quickly or in a baby you’re unable to clear it properly it can build up and it can become quite dangerous unfortunately it might cross

The blood brain barrier in a baby uh and it can lead to permanent brain damage so here’s a little graph to illustrate that you can see the baby’s result is 544 and it’s so high that it goes above of this orange line for exchange transfusion it’s so high and the risk

For this patient is is so high that we’re considering taking blood out of baby along with the B Rubin and actually giving them transfused D the blood all the efforts to reduce this B Rubin as soon as we can it’s essential that we get to the bottom of this as quickly as

Possible because you know this is one of the implications it might have so one of the things we think about is this Baby’s just been born is there something maybe to do with their own immune system or mom’s immune system that’s causing these blood cells to be

Broken down too quickly and causing all that b Rubin to be released so actually we look here some called hemolytic disease the fetus and newborn and unfortunately sometimes mom immune system can recognize that baby blood cells aren’t own it can make antibodies against it and caus these red blood cells to be

Destroyed so if you focus on this thing called dat down here you’ll see that when antibodies boun these red cells they’re unfortunately too big to go through the well so the fact that it’s negative and you can see I’ve Illustrated this by scoring through these red lines that isn’t the case here

So we exclude this amongst the other things we looked at finally we start getting an idea into actually what this patient has so this is a red blood cell cytogram it gives us really good information to the size of a blood cell and how much hebog globin it

Has so it talked about how that’s the oxygen carrying thing can you guys Spot the Difference between the normal cytogram on the left and the cytogram on the right it’s that cluster of red blood cells that have shifted right and it’s this point BMS is and myself on my night

Shift decided it’s time to make a blood film so normal red blood cells they’re round they’re by concave they have a little dip in the middle and as you know millions of them travel through your blood vessel it helps them squeeze past them but what you see and I’ve

Highlighted here in red for you there’s a lot of red blood cells that are perfectly round cleverly it’s been called the name spherites um and actually they you know they don’t have any like little pness in the middle they’re perfectly round and with the sheer mountain in here we actually find

Out this patient’s got something called hereditary spherocytosis and actually part of the red blood cell membrane all these proteins that relate to structure and keeping it strong some of these might be missing and that’s causing part of the membrane to be lost and that’s why it come perfectly

Around the fact that we’re able to identify this means you know we’ got a diagnosis and we’re able to treat the patient properly um the patient was okay in the end and you know we continue monitor them to this day thank you any questions thank you anybody want to ask anything or

Should we just go through the talks and then you can come and ask questions afterwards maybe we’ll do that keep it moving thank you H so our next speaker is Chris Chris is also a graduate of mine years ago and Chris is a histology person so

He works in cular pathology so Chris is going to do the same thing tell you about what his workplace is like what kind of things he does and then we’ll move on to two other disciplines as well thank you Chris hi yeah so I’m Chris and I’m a specialist biomedical scientist in

Histology so what is histology it’s the study of the pathology of cells and tissues we do this by producing a diagnosis based on the microscopic evaluation of very thin slices of tissue mounted on glass slides we call these tissue sections tissue on slides can only be visualized using a microscope following

A process known as staining so we use various dyes and chemicals basically to give the tissue color and many diseases including infection inflammation and even cancer can be diagnosed by looking at the cell morphology when we say cell morphology we basically mean the arrangement of cells and tissues within the organs that

We’re looking at so the first process that happens within the lab is specimen dissection so we receive a wide variety of specimens all over the hospital and even from GP surgeries ranging from tin endoscopic biopsies all the way up to whole segments of colon uh breast mastectomies

And larger specimens such as those the first thing that we need to do is we need to uh describe and measure the sample occasionally we’ll need to open that up so that formal infixation can happen this essentially preserves the tissue in most lifik State as possible and then usually it’s the

Pathologist’s job to then dissect the specimen so they look at specimen and select the most appropriate pieces of tissue to allow for diagnosis so we’ll follow the path of specimen through a histology lab so the first thing that happens is processing the tissue here moves through a sequence of reagents uh and it’s

Essentially dehydrated so the water is removed and it’s steadily replaced by molten paraffin wax when this wax cools it solidifies resulting in a very firm piece of tissue uh these are the optimal conditions for microtomy or producing a tissue section we then move on to embedding so the tissue is orientated in mold

Containing molten paraffin wax the idea idea here is to manipulate the tissue so that you’ve got the widest surface area facing down so that when you do create your tissue section you’re going to see the full picture the mold is then placed on a coal plate to solidify and you can

See here on the far right um what we would call a tissue block so that’s solidified mol and wax with the tissue suspended in the middle moving on to microtomy so here we use a specialized piece of equipment known as a microtome to produce our tissue

Sections so you can see here is where you would put your tissue block and there would be a very sharp blade in this part here and every time you turn this handle the Chuck moves up and down but it also advances towards the very sharp blade a set distance in the

Histology lab we’re working in microns so one micron is a thousandth of a millimeter so we’re dealing with very thin pieces of tissue here uh so as you might expect a high level of skin skill and manual dexterity is required to use it effectively from

Being able to uh decide how far into the tissue to cut so so that you’ve got the full picture to being able to carefully manipulate these ribbons of tissue sections and get them across onto a glass slide for staining so moving on to automated staining all tissue that receive in the

Histology lab receives a h& e stain so this stands for hemotoxin and earin the hemotoxin is a nuclear stain so it stains cell nuclei purpley blue and earin is a a cytoplasmic stain so it stains the connective tissue various shades of pink uh We’ve seen this phrase morphological before it’s a

Morphological stain which essentially again it allows you to see the the structure and the arrangement of the cells within the tissue allowing any inflammation degeneration and pathological changes to be diagnosed so here is the hemotoxin and earin stain you can see all the little purple dots are cell nuclei and the

Various shades of pink represent the connected tissue holding it all together with it being a morphological stain you can see the arrangement of these cells in in complex structures here so this is a piece of colon uh mucosa uh and you can see all the all these little Circles of the

Glands and the larger structure of the crypts within the colon and any pathological change could be quite easily seen so for example cancer the Hallmarks here would be nuclear change uh loss of tissue structure things like that can be seen just using the h& stain quality is a very important

Concept within any NHS ol laboratory uh here we can see section quality uh could greatly affect a pathologist’s ability to produce a diagnosis we’ve got things like folds in the tissue holes from rof uh trimming when you’re using the microtome this shows how basically any small um error in microtomy or any of

The other processes could result in quite a large problem for the pathologist moving on to ancillary testing so this would uh refer to any testing that happens alongside the h& stain to support the pathologist in making their diagnosis so we’ve got special stains this refers to any staining that isn’t h& essentially and

It covers a wide variety of methods that can be used to visualize specific tissue structures or microorganisms Etc we are seeing automation increase in in all the Laboratories in NHS Laboratories but uh most Labs still perform these special stains manually so we’ve got some along the bottom there we’ve got um the little

Black Flex here would be fungal hyy in fungal infection using the Groot stain further along you’ve got um this one here shows melanin using the massim Fontan stain and it would help the pathologist to be able to um categorize some melanomas imunohistochemistry is also used and this uh uses the antibody

Antigen interaction to allow specific proteins to be targeted and stained this is essential in categorizing tumor types or primary sites because various proteins are only common in certain types of tumor this is always developing alongside advances in molecular pathology um the detection of specific Gene M mutations being vitally important

In in order to select the right treatment for the patient which leads us on to molecular pathology this is a fast evolving discipline based on the diagnosis of disease through the examination of genetic material and molec abnormalities so it’s actually the specific mutations within the DNA and RNA that’s being targeted using this

Technique these proteins are often involved in genes uh to do with DNA repair tumor suppression so any mutation would lead to a loss of function and that would then lead to uncontrolled cell growth which is a common h mark of cancer the techniques uh involved here range from frent insitu hybridization

Polymerized chain reaction to whole genome sequencing and by using molecular pathology we can um have a personalized approach to treatment so you can select the most efficient treatment to that specific patients uh cancer genetic makeup the future of histology so one of the areas that’s evolving currently in

Histology is digital pathology uh this involves the scanning of the glass slide uh to create a digital image of what’s on it which is then viewed on a HD monitor as opposed to a microscope the benefits here uh uh involve um patient benefits so it allows instant access to expert second opinions

Anywhere in the world it’s much easier to share a digital image um with someone in Australia than it is to send the slides over there it benefits the Pathologists also allows them greater control over their workload and access to Accurate measuring tools and it’s also Paving the way for artificial

Intelligence so by feeding AI these um images it learns and then it’s able to screen out any normal cases just leaving the more complicated cases for the Pathologists to look at and finally we’re seeing um more expert and advanced BMS roles growing in histology uh all of these are offered by

The ibms um certain portfolios such as the diploma of expert practice in specimen dissection so that allows bms’s to train and then be able to select the tissue uh for diagnosis you’ve got the higher specialist diploma which is a master’s equivalent qualification it essentially requires you to be an expert in all

Things which have discipline you choose and this is a good option if you’re looking at more management roles such as senior biomedical scientist or lab manager and we’ve also got the advanced specialist diploma in histopath histopathology reporting so this actually requires quite a long training

Process for the BMS but by the end of it they will be able to look at the glass slides and produce a diagnosis much like a Pathologists would themselves than okay that’s it thank you thank you Chris next is Alex Al there you are halfway down in the room so Alex

Again is a graduate graduated about five years ago Works in microbiology has been very busy since um so she’s going to tell you all about what working in microbiology is like hi everyone um so yeah I’ve been working in microbiology for about 5 years now um I’m just going to go

Through really briefly about some of the things that we do in a micro lab um I could talk all day about everything we do because it’s so broad um but yeah how do I do this uh green button Sor yes so just like a quick brief

Overview about my timeline what I did so I actually found out about biomedical science through a quiz that I did at school until then I didn’t really know what they did or where I could fit into it so in 2015 I started my um degree at

York St John and um which is an ibms accredited course um I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my career um and I thought about by doing a placement I’m only going to open doors so in 2016 I did an NHS placement at James Cook in microbiology and that

Allowed me to complete my ibms certificate of competence um I graduated in 2019 and I I was really really lucky um I got a job as a band five um in the same place that I did my placement so that was really really lucky not many people get to do

That so in 2020 obviously we had the coid pandemic and working in microbiology we were one of the first labs in the country to be doing 24-hour testing for coid it was very stressful I think when you start a job um fresh out of un you don’t expect that pressure but

Uh we came out to the other end of it and we were all doing really well now um I decided that microbiology was for me um so at that point you can specialize so I specialized in microbiology and I then moved on to being a band Six specialist biomedical scientist and I’ve

Recently just started doing my Ms which is in medical microbiology at leads Becket and who knows what the future holds so just a little bit about what is microbiology so it’s the study of microorganisms so it’s just micro meaning small biology is the study of living things so that’s basically what

We do and it’s split into different categories so you’ve got bacteria parasites fungi viruses and there is prons but um prons um but it’s not class as a living organism but it is something that we study in microbiology so a little bit about what we do and how we fit into patient care

Pathway so a patient will present um with symptoms of infection so they could have fever and chills swollen lymph NOS a rash fatigue Fue headache and they just generally feel unwell so it’s at that point that the cl clinician would send samples to us in microbiology um they would also send

Other samples to biochemistry and just to look for um uh CRP uh plasma viscosity um they’ll do a ESR and then there’ll be an increased white blood cell count so that’s indicating to the clinicians that there might be an infection in this patient so in microbiology we receive every type

Of sample you can imagine it’s it smells delightful it does anything you can imagine we’ll receive it so the main ones we receive so re spinal fluid so we’re going to be getting sent that to look for um if the patient has menitis um so that’s one of

Our highest priority samples and we have like a 2hour turnaround time that we do microscopy on that and we also culture um blood cultures were probably one of our next most important samples and that’s to look for sepsis in the patient so we have an analyzer which we load

These blood cultures on and that’s going to monitor the blood culture um and it’ll detect rises in CO2 levels so that would indicate that the patient has got bacteremia um and that would like prompt us to do further investigations we receive urines that’s probably one of our most common samples um we received

Them from the hospital and from GP surgeries as well uh we receive feces samples swabs and we also provide a lot of screening for the hospital um for Hospital acquired infections such as Amar we also receive tissues and sterile fluid samples like joint fluids things like that to look for infection and like

I said at the bottom you near me and we’ve received it weed and wonderful things it’s never adulter in microbiology so a little bit why I like microbiology so it’s split between art at and manual um so it’s a lot of Hands-On testing um and also we get to

Use analyzers that’s mostly for the jobs that are a bit more tedious so now we’ve got automated analyzers that do it for us and it just makes our job a lot easier so on the automated we’ve got PCR we’ve got corology testing um they’re mostly used in virology so obviously

Like old school testing would be tissue culture it would be manual alzers um which take up a lot of time so we have introduced automated methods and that just speeds up diagnosis time so if you’ve got a patient that could have viral menitis you want to know the

Result a lot quicker so we can use PCR for that um another automated method is using moldy Toof which is it works like mass spectrometry and it’s how we identify our bacteria so when we would normally use API which can take 24 hours moldy can give us a result in 20 minutes

So obviously that’s providing um the clinicians with what what infection the patient has and then we can provide them with sensitivities and for antibiotics and how to treat that infection um on the manual side um we do a lot of microbiology is probably one of the most manual Hands-On disciplines in

Pathology so we do microscopy we do cell counts and we do gram stains as shown in the picture at the very bottom um so we would categorize what color the BAC is stained and how it looks and that could provide a preliminary um a preliminary like identification for the cination and that

Would um direct the antibiotic um treatment treatment that’s the word um we also do culture and we do bench toop identification tests which would also help to give an idea of what bacteria is growing which would then go on to The Moldy to afterwards um and we also do sensitivity

Testing in so that’s shown by the dis diffusion method that we use and we use the Zone sizes on that we compare that to the guidelines that are provided to us by ucast and then we can see whether that bacteria is sensitive or resistant to certain antibiotics um so in in the pictures

There you can see that the gramin that we we we got from this sample was a grand positive in chins that would be indicative of a strepto coca species from from the culture plates you can see the the colonies that have a zone of H um hemolysis around them and again that

Would say to was that this is a strep tocker species in this case this was actually a group a strep and the sensitivity is there we would then tell the clinicians and they would begin treatment just got a little case study here so this is just to prove why we

Need to get a lot of um clinical history from patient we need to know if they’ve had any travel history because it’s going to affect how we process the sample any um health and safety implications that that might have um we just need to protect ourself we’re dealing with um bacteria that can

Potentially be very hazardous um to us and to The Wider Community as well um so in this case this was a food industry worker um who had diarrhea on return from travel to Pakistan and Dubai um so because of this clinical details we process this sample in our Category 3

Laboratory um just because the countries in that area have a lot of bacteria and viruses that are highly contagious and can be very dangerous to us so it also allows for us to set up extra extra tests as needed so in this case it allowed us to set up a tcbs plate and

The tcbs plate is for growth of fibrio chera and they grow nice and yellow um so that allows us to identify the bacteria that’s growing from that sample and again we can do a Gram stain which shows these gram negative curved rods um so again that just gives us an indication of what’s

Growing um it is a category 3 organism so we would we did write in processing the sample in Category 3 just to protect ourself um and that was sent off for typing to colindale which is a reference Laboratory um so we Prov we provide all of the routine work um anything that

Might need further testing or confirmation typing we can send that off to a Reference Laboratory um and they collect samples from all over the country they can do surveillance um find out if there’s any outbreaks of um bacteria or virus viruses um so this showed to be serotype

01 and if you were looking at the research that was going on across the world this serotype was involved in an outbreak in Pakistan at the time so we see this patient had being on holiday um had in um became infected there and actually not shown symptoms until they

Got back um obviously him being a food industry worker it that poses an a massive infection control risk you don’t want that patient going to work if they haven’t washed their hands properly or something like that they can infect the food which is then being soled to the community

So it was very very important for us to get this result to make sure that the patient was treated um and yeah so we have to work in microbiology we need to work as a team here and we also need to work with other disciplines um just to get a full

Picture it’s a bit like being a like in investigator you’ve got to collect all the clues like Hassam was saying to provide a diag di agnosis so that the patient can be treated and there’s no um infection control risk to the community and yeah if anybody’s got any

Questions thank you our last speaker in this session is Donna who works with me at the Institute and worked in clinical biochemistry for a very long time and then more LLY blood Sciences so bridg Bridging the Divide did did both hematology and biochem so was going to

Talk to you about what working in clinical biochem is like and then after this what we’ll ask them to do is each speaker to just kind of stand at the front and you can come and talk to them about the disciplines yeah I started in blood sciences and then specialist in

Chemistry then went back to blood Sciences so a bit of a Whistle Stop tour of um clinical biochemistry it’s not as exciting as the others in terms of pictures I’m sorry so I mean biochemistry is one of the main um pathology disciplines though because it’s in pretty much every hospital I’m

Not going to say every just in case but it’s in pretty much every hospital in the UK NHS England reports that there are over 500 million biochemistry tests performed every year so if you compare that to the next highest which is 130 million which is hematology so they do a

Lot of tests um and over 50% of the biochemical tests are related to the management of chronic disease so biochemistry tests are involved in when your screening when you’re monitoring for diagnosis so they’re involved all aspects um of clinical pathology biochemistry is a highly automated um system there’s no point

Pretending to you if you’re working in rtin Biochemistry it’s analyzers it’s very automated um and it always has been and it’s just become more and more automated as you can see if you’re doing 500 million biochemistry tests in the UK in a year you don’t really have a choice

You can’t do that manually and there’s a vast aray of tests performed on one analyzer so routinely between your two main analyzers which would be a chemistry and an imuno analyzer you could have 70 tests easily different tests running on those um analyzers so some examples of analyzers

This is a seens xpt analyzer um so the menu is over 115 asses you’re not going to be running 115 asses in that one analyzer but that’s kind of showing you the the capacity that the analyzers have they run a variety of different tests but every single analyte has got a

Different um um chemical reaction and so when you’re studying that you will need to know these because they would be involved if you were troubleshooting the assd for example not you need to know immediately but over time you need to learn them um this system has got potentiometric and photometric so your

Potentiometric is your I selective electrode sodium potassium and chloride um and the other kind of test you do you do uh Ura creats you do your liver function so you might be doing alt Alan transfer gamut transfer you’ve done your B Rubin your albumin um and you might get different

Profiles when you’re working in Biochemistry so your profile that comes from a GP you might not do the exact same test as your same liver function test you do for an inpatient um depending on what contracts you’ve got so it can get a little bit complicated the test for example maybe

Everybody recing glucose so glucose is done in this kind of analyzer and it’s used to diagnose diabetes but there are also other methods so you’ve got another analyzer which is measures glycated hemoglobin so it’s traditionally used in monitoring of patients who’ve got diabetes but it can also be used in

Diagnosis um so there’s a variety of ways um of doing these assays Seaman centor these are not my pictures these are somebody else’s asses analyzers we’ll see that they’re all the same so imuno a analyzer that uses chem luminesence um again this is not uncommon so these are going to be your

Tests B12 fate um ions your hormones lutenizing hormone FSH LH estral um so diagnosis of of lots of different things I mean obviously b2f deficiency um vitamin D is automated so you can do uh your initial vitamin D screen uh usually if it’s high though you would then send it to your

Specialist Services where they would use a different technology because these analyzers can’t usually detect very well vitamin uh D D2 and D3 separately um so they’ll just measure your D3 so there are other analyzers available so the architect Al lenity cni so it’s you’ll see here there’s a bit of

Similarity so the C side is the chemistry which is potentiometry um and photometry which is surprisingly enough the exact same as the um is it sismic um and the iight amuno acid chem luminesence so you’ll find that you get wet chemistry analyzers so they talk about wet chemistry hasn’t mentioned

Quite as much now only because we don’t tend to use the dry chemistry analyzers so when they say wet chemistry it just means liquid reagents dry chemistry analyzers are slides which they used to use in Spoke sites um these days spoke sites can be major traa centers so it doesn’t really

Doesn’t mean as much as it used to but the dry chemistry analyzers are very expensive um slides are very expensive and the througho is low so these days almost every laboratory hospital will be doing such a high volume of tests that most of them are not going to have a dry

Chemistry analyzer it’s always going to be the wet chemistry and they all pretty much use the same technology and a lot of them will use the exact same chemical reaction so the good thing about chemistry is that once you kind of know it it’s going to be the same no matter

Where you go so that’s a positive so the type of samples that that we would put through the analyzer going to be uring samples we’re going to use sort of the serums um fluide oxalates or plasma we don’t usually put whole blood through these um analyzers mostly to do with the

Protein gets a bit sticky um and you’ve got to clean it up which you have to do anyway but whole blood’s a bit stickier than um serum and plasma but we also put csfs um through as well so this is an example of a impco track system other track systems are

Available um you’ve got the bulk sample input in the left this is literally a conve Bel we’ll put all your samples into the bulk sample input so the samples that you’re going to put through here are those ones I mentioned so your SST gel tube samples you’re going to put

Your lithium hippin so your plasma samples uh your fluid oxalate for glucose and alcohol you’re not going to put through your Gans cuz they’re come in a PO they have to be Alo watered um yeah it’s quite hard to get get in a tube so they come in a feal samples

Which would normally be uh tested in routine by chem would go to your specialist lab and then you’ve got your cerebral spinal fluid um so the cerebral spinal fluid and also your pediatric samples are quite precious some poor person has suffered a lot to give you

Those so they tend to be Alo and put through separately so not every sample goes into the bulk sample input you would have a sort of startat area where you can put your urgence and where you can put these special samples um but when they go into the bulk sample input there’s a

Pre-analytical section so they’ll go through and be cused the analyzer reads the barcode it knows which tests it needs to do and it will send it through the track to the different SE and eyesight analyzers to perform those assays and then it comes out at the end

So usually at the end it comes out and they’re sorted um and they might be sorted into these can be failed um these will get something wrong with them um and these need to go somewhere else when they come out to be failed they might set in a holding rack

Because in chemistry again you get a lot of reflex testing so so reflex might be anything so for example potassium’s over six automatically go back get retested um TSH test so thyroid function test used to be TSH and 3 T4 about 6 seven years ago we just test the TSH and then

If the sample was greater or lower than a certain value it will go reflex this time instead of repeating the TSH it will reflex to a TF a 3 T4 sample there’s going to be a lot of different reflex tests set up some of the sample storage mod are

Connected to refrigerated units so they will automatically be filed so if you need to get a sample back you’ve got on your little computer and say please give me the sample back they will only hold samples for about 48 to 72 hours and that’s because of the high throughput

And the high volume there’s just not enough storage so there be a little hole in the side it just spits all out into a bin so you have to remember to change the bins so biochemistry highly automated you do a lot of quality control because every single analyte

That’s on every single analyzer and a track could have multiple analyzers all connected is going to need to be QED things like your Chemistry analyzers me I’ll show you the pictures so this is like an example track in a lab you can see how many different modules and how many analyzers there

Are so all of your seide analyzers so routine chemistry slightly less stable than your IM imuno so it might be every 4 to 6 hours you’re having to quality control every assay obviously it’s you don’t let them go down at the same time immuno is more stable it could be

Between 6 and 12 hours that you’re going to be C seeing them but it’s really important because you cannot afford to put out a wrong result because that wrong result can very negatively impact on a patient if you tell them oh your antibiotics really high so they take

Them off the antibiotic and it’s not and then their infection flares so biochemistry Al being the least sexy kind of discipline is really really important and also as I say it’s not so manual when you’re doing routine but every sample represents a patient and that patient could be you or me or your

Parents or any so biochemistry is really important and it’s involved in everything it has has been mentioned all of these investigations are looked at together to try and decide what is wrong with this patient what are we going to do this is example track so the next one

Is showing you just inside of a fridge what it might look like when you’re manually failing samples or you’ve got another analyzer that you put your samples into and it will file them all out and again it will kind of go these ones are done you can just put them away

And they’re all back coded so everything can be tracked um or it will say these are a problem and it could be you know labels run the wrong way or it’s got a big line down it or something’s happened to it um and it could be these samples

Now have to be sent away so certain samples they might do the routine testing but then there’s still other analysis that has to happen so they need to go away so you’re sorting a lot of things um and checking a lot of things it’s a kind of ATT attention to detail

On the right you can see the racks these are example racks that have been set up for qc’s quite a lot of them um you get multi qc’s so you get some that will test maybe like 20 of your tests but some of them need to have specific QC

Material and then obviously you’ve got your urines so there’s a lot of um a lot of cing that has to be done and you’ve got to make sure that you’re using the right amounts the right volumes that you know what you’re doing you’re checking lot numbers um instantly

You’ve got reagent lot numbers to check so as I see it is quite attention to detail you shouldn’t assume and that’s one of the things sometimes when things get very automated that people kind see oh yeah it’s all working as it should it’s not so you need to be aware of what you’re

Doing and there other analyzers in a routine lab it isn’t just your big seeing eyes side type you’ve got the spectr photometer which as I mentioned earlier a CSF samples so as well as measuring total protein and glucose whenever we go through the main analyzer um you you can measure CSF uh

For subar acoid hemorage so bleeding in the brain so you’ll be looking for sort of Bellin hemoglobin and the CSF and then the osmometer um measuring osmolality so investigation of fluid and electrolyte disorders um and then as I mentioned ear you get hb1c but I do not have a picture

Of that analyzer that’s becoming maybe less in a routine lab so it might be in a hub lab but not in a Spoke um and it’s just depend on the way that your lab is set up track analyzers can also take hb1c analyzers um so your your track

System will totally depend in the laboratory in which you’re working it will depend whether it’s a hub or a Spoke system so your Standalone analyzers tend to be in your spoke sites and the the track system that you saw will be in a hub site so yeah by chemistry very automated but very

Important thank you thank you very so thanks so if if you are anything like me you are either at the end of your second year maybe end first year you are somewhere in the degree Journey thinking the day is going to come where I’ve got

That piece of paper and all of a sudden I’ve got to do proper adult stuff I’ve got to start thinking about what I’m going to do next thinking back on my own experience that was a really really stressy time because to be honest I can barely make a

Decision on what I’m going to do tomorrow let alone for the rest of my life so what I’m going to do now is hopefully give you a bit of an insight into how to answer that what next question and how to keep answering that what next question for as many years as

You need to answer that question for so I’m going to I’m going to cover a bit of a process it’s a bit of a a bit of a cyclic process that you will keep coming back on again and again and again in your career and that starts with a

Period of reflection and that sounds really wishy-washy but it it properly isn’t I I’ll come on and tell you more about it that reflection will drive the jobs that you apply for and the direction that you choose to take as you move through your career hopefully that will lead you to

An interview and a successful outcome from that interview and a job that you will move into for however long whatever that journey is at multiple stages on the road there is an opportunity to network to develop and to grow and so what I’m going to talk to

You about today is how to harness that as you do the reflection the application the interview and more networking still once you’ve got all of that down it’s just a rinse and repeat and keep going until the end of your working life which s which actually it does you

Know sounding much better in my head than it did when I said it out loud that day I’m like what have I just said so so you’ve got a degree if you haven’t got a degree yet you’re going to get one quite soon four questions that you need to ask

Yourself at this point first of all what are you good at that is not the same as what you enjoy okay often they are but not always so question number one what are you good at have a think about that what you good at could you do it for the

Rest of your life then think about what you enjoy I would always Advocate doing something that you enjoy more than something you are good at so don’t by my moral book don’t let anybody tell you otherwise question three what are your immediate needs you you finished your

Degree do you need to do more study is there something pressing that makes that an imperative next step or actually do you need to just detach from education for a couple of years and go and travel or go and work in the charity sector or

Whatever it is you need to do have a think about what those immediate needs are and how they can be fulfilled question four and this is by far the most important question to ask yourselves at this stage in your career is what are your values and principles

Because over the rest of your working life you will find time and again that those values and principles are challenged and you are going to have to meet that challenge each and every time it happens certainly in my career I have stepped off one direction of travel because it was challenging my beliefs

And my morals too much and I was not prepared to sell myself short for what I believed in just for a paycheck once you’ve asked those questions it’s time to start thinking about the jobs that you want what are you going to apply for how are you going

To do that six important steps this time so we’ve gone from a five-step path four questions six six points for for the application number one have a CV keep it as a working draft and update it regularly even if you have just delivered a talk even if you have just

Done some new training learned a different skill set completed a new game on the Xbox whatever it might be put it in the CV because it’s part of that Journey that gives you the skill set that is Uniquely Yours when you apply for a job using that principle of your unique

Skill set each job application you submit needs to be tailored do not rinse and repeat ones that you used before it’s really obvious from a recruiting side of the table if you’ve written a covering letter for a different job usually those applications go straight in the bin because you’ve not invested

The time to show why you want this job and why it is a good fit against your values and principles use your network people that you know talk to them I work at the ibms now because I talk to somebody that I knew we talk a lot but but I spoke to

Somebody that I know that Network you will trust you will respect you will value their opinion and so the things that they tell you and the opportunities that come from them are likely to be a really good fit for what you believe or what’s important to you keep looking for jobs don’t just

Think right I’ve stuck an application in now I’m done again more about my career because this is all about me of course um when I applied for this job at the interview at The Institute I also applied for a different job that I got an interview for I was supremely lucky

To have two job offers to work with at the same time but it meant that I had the flexibility to make decisions that work for me oh I hope I’ve gone back backwards and stad forwards Story of My Life be be be extracurricular nobody is a working machine nobody employers don’t want

Machines in that context people want to know that you’ve got a life outside of work and that you do something to detach from work speaking in purely HR terms as employees we are useless to our employers if we are just a machine that burns out okay so have something that is

Different to work that is yours that you are proud to share with somebody that you might work for and then rethink your skills so what you can pepet where else can you apply those skills pipetting gives you dexterity so how else could those skills be used to be repurposed in a different

Sector the job I’m doing now relies on skills that I actually gained quite a number of years ago that have just sat dormant but constantly refined and updated so use those skills and don’t forget them key tips when you’re applying for that job after you’ve kind of gone

Through all of that thought process number one forget the job description the job description is not what will get you the job the job description is there to tell you what you are likely to do on a day-to-day basis is it won’t be a full list of what’s expected and there’s

Usually get out Clauses where employers can say handle the duties as required forget the job description there’s a lot of noding here yeah forget the job description secondly use the person specification this is what they’re looking for a skill this is the skill set they’re looking for if you’ve looked

At a person specification most of them will say that certain skills are essential or desirable my my advice to you would be if you think you’ve got about 2third of the essentials apply for the job anyway you never know what the competition is going to be like if you’ve only got one

Or two you you’re probably wasting your time but if you’ve got a decent number of the essentials sell yourself drop in the application It Might Sting initially to get a rejection but a rejection from a job that in your heart of hearts you know isn’t the right fit for you will

Enhance your skills and your ability to deal with the inevitable rejection of a job that you think you really did want so make sure that you you work that person specification use the star technique this is talked about quite a lot on LinkedIn and another another kind of

Like CV hunting and job searching websites the star technique is is the invogue core of Competency Based job interviews at the minute the idea of the star technique is that it will help you answer answer questions like give me an example of when tell me how you did if

This situation happened how would you handle it so the star technique is all about situation task action response so what was the situation that you were faced with give a bit of context so people understand what was your task what was your input into that particular situation that particular problem that

Particular solution what action did you take how did you solve the problem how did you overcome the challenge how did you deal with the difficult employee at work and then what was the result how did it all finish what was the feedback close the loop the other thing I’ve done it again

Gone backwards the other thing with the I know they yeah they are they’re even red and green um the other thing I would say is give yourself time it will inevitably take longer than you think to apply for the job so don’t do it the night that the application is dueing

Give yourself plenty of time so you’ve submitted it it’s gone it’s in the job application is done the first thing that will happen will be long listing this is where somebody who is not usually a discipline or subject specialist will sift through the pile and say yes or no based on some predefined

Criteria at your stage in your career it is likely to be do you have the right degree are you fresh out of University that kind of thing okay the long listing is designed to give a list of people who could on the face of it do the job that the employer is asking

For then it’ll go to short listing and short listing is where the particular skills and attributes that you’re presenting in your CV and covering letter and application questions will be scrutinized Often by the person who’s going to be your boss so you need to make sure that if you get to the short

Listing stage that you shine through as you okay so don’t use great big words that you don’t understand in the application form use words that represent you okay make sure that your personality your humor shines through the third point is the interview itself if you are offered an interview

There is something on your CV and in the application form that the employer wants to hear more about they’re interested in you but they don’t want you yet your job in the interview is to convince them that whatever they’ve seen that they’re interested in and how you

Present on the day is exactly what they want to need and their company can’t keep existing unless you are on staff with them okay the interview is all about selling you principally the interview will see whether you fit with the team are are you the right skills mixed do you have

The right personality is your humor appropriate do you present in the way that the company would be happy to send out to represent them you need to do some work here because you need to find out if you can what it is that’s made the employer interested in you are they interested

Because it’s in the grand scheme of things a relatively Junior role is it just that they are looking for graduates so that they can train them in the way that they want them to be trained or do you have a particular manag material skill that they’re looking for or have

You used a particular technique during your final year project that that actually they’re struggling to get technicians to to work into so if you can find out what they’re looking for what you’re doing here is making them want you I’ve done it again so find out who’s on the panel if

You can give them a ring speak to them the jobs that I have felt happiest in and the interviews that in the end of obviously been given the job but the interviews that have felt the best for me very often the ones where I’m least

Nervous as I go into them are the ones where I’ve rung somebody up in advance and I’ve been and had a look at the lab I’ve spoken to the person who’s going to be my boss and I’ve I’ve kind of got to see what makes them tick because that means

That then I go into the interview knowing a little bit more about what they are looking for and the key point of an interview that I’m going to come on to in a minute is that it is is a two-way street yes they are seeing whether you are suitable to go and work

For them but also do their values and principles match up against yours if you don’t want to do shift work don’t apply for a shift job okay it’s it’s as simple as that as that kind of stuff if you get to the stage of the interview then again apply the star

Technique to the questions that they ask you okay so when they’re asking you the questions during the interview use that star technique situation task action response and also prepare plenty of time in advance if you don’t know where you’re going rehearse the route if necessary check that if you’re driving

For a 9:00 interview don’t rehearse the route at 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon because you’ll inevitably be late make sure that you’re appropriately dressed get a friend to help you with some of the common Competency Based questions and rehearse what they’re supposed to be rehearse what your answers need to

Include and get some really honest feedback show your skills and experience do it in context and do it in every single answer it’s a time for you to shine so don’t make the interviewer do all of the talking your voice needs to be one that’s heard loud and clear throughout the interview

Think about your strengths think about your weaknesses and do not sell a weakness as something like oh my weaknesses I worked too hard yeah right my weakness is I’m often two or three minutes late and I’m really trying hard to make sure that I set an alarm so that

That doesn’t happen in future present a weakness and show how you are addressing that weakness because that makes you a better employee because you are self-aware it is a two-way street do you see yourself working there could you be managed by this person who talks incessantly while you laughing

So it would that be so could you could you be managed by that person and ask probing questions show that you’re interested show that you’ve taken the time to find out about their research or what they’re a reference lab for or something like that if you done due

Diligence it should be really easy to ask those questions ask about working patterns particularly if it’s part-time or shift or that kind of work or you have a particular situation where you’ve got caring responsibilities or kids or whatever ask about those things in the interview it’s too premature in the interview to ask

About salary and leave they haven’t asked they haven’t asked you to work for them yet that set of discussions if you get them right will set you for a really wellp paid career with loads of holiday so give those discussions which are important the time that they need the

Time is not during the interview and then use your network reflect on how the interview went when you came out of the interview how did you feel not about whether you answered the questions not about whether you forgot to mention something that you now think is important but were you

Authentically you or were you putting on a mask we all know because of nerves that there’ll be a little bit of a mask there but you still need need to shine through if you think of something afterwards write it down CU if they ring you back to offer you the job you can

Ask them then if they don’t offer you the job then it’s not really a relevant question to ask because they’re not offered you the job if you if they do offer you the job plan what are you going to do when do you need to start do you need to move

Home to be able to do that do you need to go and get some clothes do you need to tell them about a holiday that you’ve got coming up if they don’t offer you the job how are you going to handle that is that going to sting because it’s a

Job that you really wanted and if so make sure that you’ve got some kind of selfcare in place so that you can handle that rejection cuz it’s never nice particularly when you spend time trying to prepare for a job that you want if they don’t offer you the job and you

Didn’t really want it because you didn’t like the manager on the day or whatever Shake It Off don’t worry about it don’t sweat it if they do offer you the job what parameters are you working to don’t just say yes under any circumstances because that can get really unpleasant really quickly and you

Just end up in a job that you potentially love but hate because of some kind of circumstance that could have been worked out at this stage don’t try and do anything else on the day of an interview they are always draining if you gave your best performance you will be knackered when

You come out of it so take the rest of the day off do something you enjoy take your mind off the interview and do not dissect your performance it’s done you cannot change whether they’re going to give you that job now or not so it’s pointless worrying about it I say this

As the kind of person that will do nothing other than worry about an interview when I come out of it try to just learn from the experience if you do think that you answered the questions badly because you rushed them or you missed something important what

Could you do in future to prevent that problem coming out again and that’s it thank you very much if anybody’s got any questions I will happily answer them has anybody got any questions we can do a couple of quick questions and then we’ll move on to our other

Graduates yeah just that initial sort of how do you approach the the panel um how do you know who’s on the panel and how do you make that phone call without it being offputting yeah really good question so um this is the bit where potentially you have to

Just put a bit of a mask in place particularly if that kind of very forward approach is something that you would find a challenge so for a lot of jobs when you are invited to an interview it will say who the panel is so it will say it’ll either name the

People or it will say laboratory manager or whatever a little bit of Googling nowadays will find an email address or a phone number that you can ring and just just send them an email literally say I’ve got an interview interview and I’d like to talk to you informally about the

Job before we get to the interview or I’ve seen that You’ got this this post out most job adverts now will say if you want to talk to somebody informally give this person a ring or send this person an email literally send them an email and say I’m interested in applying but I

Might need to move geographically so I’d just like to come and have a look at the lab or this is a new discipline to me I’ve only just graduated I’d love to come and see how you do things based on what I saw when I was University so

White lies are allowed at this stage so if you need to just tell a little bit of a white lie to give you the excuse to make the contact that’s absolutely fine the key is when you get there have something sensible to ask so you know if

If you’re going round the labs why is it that you want to go around them because these people are taking time out of the day to show you around and if they understand what you need to get out of that visit they can kind of answer your

Questions for you so when I first started working with Sue years and years ago one or two years ago not lots of years ago when I started working with Sue yeah I think we were both about I think I was four and you might have been

Five um so when when we started working together a long time ago I literally went and said right I’ve got a list of questions and instantly I now know looking back Sue put a big tick in a box because I’ve gone prepared with a list of questions about things that I needed

To know and of course that made Sue’s job really easy because she was just able to Rattle down the list with me and them all that meant then that when I put the application in it was better tailored to the job description and the person specification because I’d had

That conversation with somebody and so I was able to really specify what I thought was important about the job just if I may bounce off that um from my point of view where I’ve sat on interview panels it’s so infrequent to get people making contacts and saying I’ve got into

I’ love to come and look around I love showing people around the lab because you’re you’re almost having a pre meet yeah you know that little bit of conversation as you walk around you’re kind of getting to know the candidate even before the day you know that FS not

Scored but they sizing us up and we’re almost sizing them up as well so in my experience it’s so infrequent that what have you got to lose make that and you go into the interview already being known for the right reasons as being the person that went out of your way to go

And find out a bit more about the job do it every time every time initiative and doing some research isn’t it when the placement students were talking about getting ready for their interviews that’s what they did wasn’t it find out about the company have questions to ask

That kind of thing um I think in interest of time I was going to say are we over time I was just chatting you’re fine no you’re fine so next it’s Lauren isn’t it and then Abdul is on us so Lauren’s going to speak to you again

Lauren graduated 5 years ago yeah 2018 2018 5 years ago um and since then Lauren is done a postgraduate course that she’s going to tell you about and she’s now a physician associate so Lauren’s going to talk to you about her experience and becoming a physician associate thank you so much for having

Me today um so my name’s Lauren I’m 26 years old and I’m from a small town in the Northwest called clithero in November 2018 I graduated from York St John University with an honors degree in biomedical science and then in the following February um 2019 I

Went on to study a master’s degree in physician associate studies at the University of Manchester um and now I am fully qualified working in respirat medicine at Royal Preston hospital um Lancashire teachings Hospital trust um so today I’m going to speak to you about further education following

Your degree in biomedical science um and in particular physician associate studies what a physician associate is how I got to where I am today um why I wanted to become a PA and a bit of a day in the life of what we do um what we do generally so what is a

Physician associate we’re medically trained healthc Care Professionals and we work alongside doctors to provide medical care and we can work independently under a clinical supervisor um and we uh across all different specialities so we have Pas working in general practice general medicine um and speciality um areas as well so

Pediatrics surgery um mental health and a acute medicine so what can we do so we um would go and see a patient we would take medical history perform clinical examination request investigations and then interpret those investigations to come up with a differential diagnosis and then hopefully formulate a man

Management plan um to help that patient we also do therapeutic and diagnostic procedures so in respiratory we do a lot of plural work so taking fluid off the chest um and certain chest strains um my colleagues in gastroenterology he is doing some kind of training um to be able to perform

Endoscopies and some of my surgical colleagues assist in theaters so there’s quite a lot of exciting um things that we do at the moment we are not able to prescribe or request ionizing radiation so CT scans chest xrays um that’s because we’re not currently regulated in

The UK so in 2019 the General Medical Council um were asked to regulate us however with Co and brexit that’s kind of pushed things back a little because um it needs to go through legislation and the government have been a bit busy so the next consultation is due to be

Early um early 2024 so we’re really hoping that that does um does get there cuz it would be really useful for us to have our prescribing rights and um and also request X-rays and things um but it doesn’t hinder our practice too much in particularly working in secondary care

On the wards because there’s often a lot of doctors around that are able to support and help um so why did I want to become a physician associate I will answer this question at the end I’m conscious of time and I think if anyone’s got any questions I’d rather tell you the

Information you need to know rather than just talk about my experience um so in terms of what you need to do to be able to become a PA you need to be hold or predict um be predicted a 21 in a healthcare science degree um or an an

Allied Health professional um so we come from variety of backgrounds a lot of biomedical scientists and biochemists um human human physiology and Anatomy um and then also different professions so pharmacists paramedics um physiotherapists we’ve got a huge array of different backgrounds um and re more recently some

Universities have um now now require the ukat which is essentially like an admissions test just because it becoming more popular um and also it’s really important to get some relevant work experience so I don’t know for everyone here but for me personally I didn’t have any

Family in the medical field so it is quite difficult I appreciate to get onto the wards or to get into a GP practice for experience but um you don’t have to always do that necessarily so you could go and get a job as a HCA do some work

Experience in a care home I um volunteered at a hospice for a couple of hours a week whilst I was studying um and it’s mainly the learning experience that you gave from that and how you’re able to apply that to you to your role as a physician associate which is the

Most important thing for you to take away um in terms of training so obviously generally speaking um it will be slightly different for every University but it’s a 2-year um program some Sometimes some universities offer post-graduate diploma and some of them offer the Masters um I just want to mention here that funding

Is one of the downfalls of this course so it’s a 2-year master’s degree at £99,000 um per year now if you do the Masters which for me was an additional 5,000 word research project you do get the £10,000 funding so it was definitely worth it um and in your first and second year

It’s very he um it’s very placement heavy so the first year you run State placements in general medicine and then the second year is when you do your specialities um in between that you’re at University usually the first at the beginning of the years you do like quite a large

Block of lectures workshops um communication skills sessions often we get um actors in to um play the role of a patient and you then would practice your communication skills give information giv Breaking Bad News and also clinical skill workshops as well um some extras that are are included in some university

Courses so um especially with man we did integrated training in prescribing safety and anticipation for the legislation change and um at Manchester University they have a special laboratory for patients who have donated their bodies to science and we use that for our um Hands-On human anatomy um Based Teaching and and learning which

Was really special um and some placements as well um you can arrange for them to do anywhere abroad so that’s also a good experience um so just a bit of a a day in the life of what I do so we as in secondary care I spend a lot of the time

On the spiritual Ward we’ve got a high Care Unit um and the general respir Ward so we do the ward round prepare patients look at the investigations um determine where they are up to in the treatment plan Chase of pen in outstanding um investigations review blood results

Review scans um we might have a chat with microbiology about antibiotics or um I don’t know request a cardiac monitoring on a patient so we kind of work quite heavily on the wards and if there’s anybody particularly unwell we’ll go and see them um and devise up a

Management plan and then I also do quite a bit of in reaching into to a& e so that’s where we go and see spiritual patients to try and reduce the length of stay bring them up to the W sooner or discharge them and we have now just set

Up a virtual Ward which was initially run by um Physician Associates so we would remote monitor patients um and then I also do a general thoracic Clinic where I I’m able to see my own patients with chronic respiratory conditions um so there’s quite a lot of variety within

The role within respiratory and then again as I mentioned earlier getting hands on with some of the um more Diagnostic and therapeutic Pro procedures and I also have recently undertaken an educational role where um there’s four of us in the trust that try and develop educational kind of opportunities for Physician Associates

In the Northwest um so we’ve developed kind of PA teaching um and different kind of workshops and things for Pas within the trust in terms of additional responsibilities so once you are qualified um you do need to maintain your professional development so we have to do 50 CPD um

Get 50 CPD points a year so that’s attending kind of um learning experiences reflecting um and we also have to do perform a number of kind of case-based discussions so any in particular like um cases that we we’ve learned about we will write that up and have a discussion with our senior about

How that patient was managed um again clinical skills so Vena puncture canulation catheterization energy tube insertion and then we also involved in um Audits and quality improvement projects I’m currently um doing a a research project actually about SP fast fast sputum analysis um and whe in patients with Hospital

Acquired pneumonia and whether this can um improve kind of outcomes based on the microbiology sensitivities and finally um every seven year so initially every seven years we would have to reset an exam to maintain our competency however they’ve just um scrapped that now and we’re now having

To every year do a portfolio of um a criteria which is due to come out in October so that will ensure that we remain um kind of validated and maintain on at the moment we’re part of um a managed register which is run by the faculty of Physician Associates um so

Yeah that’s just a whistle top tour of PA studies um thank you for listening if anyone has any questions I’ll be around after and I’m happy to answer thank you we’ll go straight into Abdul’s talk and then we’ll just ask lur and ab to stay at the front you can ask questions

Before you need to go so ABD if you’d like to come up Abdul didn’t go to York St John everyone he went somewhere else had a lot of students from yor C but you were a lecturer I did teach him as well yeah so I pulled a few favors to get

People here for you this afternoon so yeah Abdel graduated in 201 10 long time ago um so yes so Abdel graduated then and he’s going to talk to you about what he’s done since then um and you’ve got loads of different experiences to talk to them about

Haven’t you Sarah I will leave you to it and I’ll just thank you very much um so I’m going to talk about industry experience and moving from the lab to the corporate world and this is actually a good segue from Jim’s um talk earlier because I came I had to make some

Decisions after I graduated so I’m going to talk about the choices I made moving into the lab and then my role in Industry so how how how did I get to where I am now so I graduated in 2010 and after months of applications and probably more than 40 50 applications I

Got nowhere I was just waiting and it was about 8 months into um 8 months after where I had two come up at once so I applied for an msse in biotechnology because I loved the Practical element of um my degree and I also applied for an NHS role um as an

MLA so I had to make the choice do I start the Masters or do I go into and get some experience as an MLA I decided to choose the MLA role um um and didn’t go down the uh MSC so I thought let’s get some lab experience because I I

Thought if I do an MSC in biotechnology will I be in the same position where I’ll be applying for jobs um it’s I had to make that choice so um I won’t go through my whole career in the lab because you’ve heard what someone as an MLA AP and biomedical scientist does but

What I do want to reiterate is that experience that I got in the lab was the foundation for where I am today so all the lessons learned learned as an MLA as an AP I still use today in my role um life in Industry so as was a BMS and

Then I heard about a job as an application specialist with BD um BD actually has this is an um BD has a stand out there as well so go visit them you can learn all about what they do there but I applied as an application specialist for the UK and Island um and

One of the things that I did when I applied for that role um mentioned earlier was I actually came to ibms and met with my potential manager uh other positions there as well so I did some research some networking as well um I got the job but I also something else as

Well I was in the lab when I heard that there’s going to be an application specialist role coming because the application specialist for BD at the time that came to our lab I worked at sord Royal um he said he’s leaving so I went in the corridor and I said ah

You’re leaving how do I apply for that job so I actually um just asked him and he he actually helped me told me what I need to do um he didn’t say I’m going to guarantee to get the job but at least I made that first step to um probe some

Questions I then moved into a global Healthcare consultant role and again I’ll talk to you about what that job entails um and then at the moment I’m working as a global manager for Professional Services as well but one of the things that I want to reiterate as

Well is these jobs didn’t just come easily um after graduating one of the key things that I I do want to make sure that you know and what I’ve learned is that you might have to do further study whether that’s CPD while doing the lab

Or just a short course um it’s not clear there but I can talk to you and answer any questions on those later but I did a a course in lean6 Sigma I got my green belt so they’re different uh belts and um the highest one is a a black belt so

I’ve got my lean Six Sigma Black Belt qualification as well the one on top that is becoming a master black belt um and again I won’t go into the details of what someone as a lean 6 Sigma Black Belt would do but it’s about process optimization and that helped me with my

Role as a global Healthcare consultant so we talked about um Improvement in the in the wards in the labs it’s usually lean Consultants or lean Six Sigma Consultants that will support that in the labs it’s about optimizing processes again I’ll go into more detail of what that

Entails I currently just uh finished my master in um my MBA Masters in business admin again one of the reasons why I want to do that and I’m doing that is because I look at potential jobs that I could apply for it’s usually MBA preferred so my next role will probably

Be um you know the NBA will help me with my next role basically um so I always look at what do I want to do next what do I need to do to get there so I’m a scientist by trade really um my degree was biomedical science I have no

Marketing experience I I have no operations a lot of the roles that are that I could potentially apply for are marketing management operations role the MBA will definitely help me if I want to apply for one of those roles so um again this talk isn’t about

BD but just to give you an example of the solutions again if you go to the stand you can find out all about them but some of the products in the division that I work for have blood culture bottles so we heard Ella worked in the micro lab and she talked about blood

Culture bottles we Supply the blood culture bottles as well as the instrumentation uh we Supply the tubes we Supply automation for different uh parts of the uh lab processing in in the microbiology lab blood culture instruments we also have molecular instrumentation as well so a wide portfolio of instrumentation the reason

Why I want you to know what we do is because my first role as I mentioned as an application specialist in Industry required me to know about this instrumentation but I needed the CL clinical lab experience as I mentioned before so the being an MLA being an AP

BMS really helped me with that role because I knew exactly what they what that position entails what how they utilize the instrumentation so I could really build that Rapport when I’m um going to a customer so going to the lab so my customers were the lab um so this

Role I was covering the UK and Ireland so it did mean even though I was in Manchester I’d probably be in Vanessa one week I’d be in Ireland another week so it does mean there’s a lot of travel within this role but I got to meet different Labs I

Got to I was exposed to the way the same sample whether it’s a CSF or blood culture is being processed in a different lab so again I could see you know how things can be different but also how things are the same as well so again I built my experience my knowledge

My network within this role um so I support the sales so I would go to a potential customer that would probably buy a blood culture instrument and do a lunchtime presentation this is our instrument this is how you would process the samples these are the benefits and

Support the sales in that activity so again the application specialist role would have that scientific background that knowledge of the instrument as well if the customer then decided to buy that instrument I would then support them with their validation their verification work I’d also give them additional training um and support them during

Their implementation until they went live with that instrument and then obviously once you’ve got the instrument in the lab that’s it doesn’t end there I would then support as an application specialist if they’ve got any technical issues afterwards or if there’s updates or upgrades to the software I would then go

Back into the lab and teach them on the new software um sometimes install the new software as well depending on um experience as well now as an application specialist again talking about Network and it being exposed I I worked with sales Engineers European application specialist so from being an application

Specialist I could potentially move into a European role as a European application specialist to support all the application Specialists within the European region so each country I’d be responsible for them so that’s another role that you look into I’d work with technical support so over the phone again that’s another role

That you could potentially apply for after graduating and product managers as well so we have product managers that manage the portfolios of the culture instruments within the UK so again this was the foundation of one of the roles the next role that I applied for and was

Successful remember I did a lean Six Sigma Green Belt and black belt qualification to help me get the next role which was the global Healthcare consultant role so this was a big step again each of these roles had huge learning curves as well so um I had the

Appetite to do it um I got the role and I think that’s what impressed these managers was the fact that I was determined to learn and um had some of the foundational skills so you can see in the bottom left the clinical diagnostic experience was still fundamental for this role but one

Of the things that I learned um doing the lean6 Sigma Black Belt and green belt qualification was the continuous Improvement mindset workflow mapping and design so as a healthcare consultant if you think about Automation in the biochemistry lab microbiology is moving in that direction there’s a lot of consolidation big lines going into

The microlabs now where samples the inoculation is automated Etc as a consultant I would go in there to look at their current workflow and help the sales to say this is how you can improve your workflow um as within my role I also did training coaching and mentoring

So that’s internal so I would train application Specialists on how to do some uh some green belt equivalent uh Consulting um once the system’s gone in so big again I’m not here to sell the keyra system but the BD keyra system is a um a total lab automation solution

Should I say or would then go in there to see how there’s other room for improvement look at the data analyze the data with the lab managers and say if you process your samples maybe this at this time you can find some efficiency gains by doing that as

Well as as you can see in the teams I work with marketing as in in the healthcare consultant role I work with application specialist product managers project managers as well so if you think about big lab Transformations project managers is a key role as well so again

You might graduate and you might want to do a qualification um uh you know a short course on there’s like prints Etc that you might want to look into as well if you want to go down the project management route and they are fundamental for these big lab

Transformations as well so I worked with them you may want to consider R&D roles as well and I actually support R&D with new product support as well so with my experience and the in the lab me traveling around the world so in this role I actually traveled to like San

Diego I was in China in Wuhan I was in the Middle East I went to Africa so there’s a lot of travel involved again they’re still doing the same thing that you were doing in a microbiology lab in sford which is process a urine but they might just do it slightly different so

It’s learning they might do it better so I can go back to another lab and say have you ever considered doing this and that’s what a consultant does looks at ways to improve and help the lab but working with new new product support what I could do is for example the blood

Culture instrument so if I went to a lab and taught someone how to use that new students usually are the ones that give a lot of feedback and ask questions but why do we do it this way or things that we’ve never considered so I can’t talk

About the new products that are in development but I can relay that information to R&D and say this is a feedback that we’ve had maybe you should consider doing it this way um staff scientists as well we have staff scientists that work for us that will do

Some of the testing as well so it’s fun fundamental role before the product actually goes to the customer or before we launch a new product is the work that goes behind that so that’s the healthcare consultant role um we use an engagement model again I won’t go

Through that in detail um just conscious of time and I can see the next speakers are here as well um so in terms of workflow optimization as a consultant if you think about the lab and the different workbenches sometimes it’s not optimal you might go and get a reagent

From over here then work to a bench over there then so as a workflow consultant we would go in and map out do some spaghetti diagrams do the calculations on how long it’s taken to process that one sample and then say actually if you implement this you’ll be able to find

Gain so that’s just a a snippet of what a consultant would do I now work as I mentioned um I’m a global manager for Professional Services so as part of that I do the lean training development some of the materials for customer facing so the role that I’m in now is very

Internal within the company but I’m de veloping material that can be utilized by the tailes of the applications Etc so again you can see all the skills and that I learn from being an MLA AP BMS and the roles I just continued to support the roles that I the role that

I’m in now um so with that note I just want to leave with a message um so Tai Ono is the T um he he is a Renown for TPS um Toyota production system um and so progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with the existing situation so again that’s something that

I learned even after graduating and I thought you know I need to do something and make a choice Etc so hopefully um something to take home any questions I’ll be around thank you very [Applause] much thank you very much um so our technician in the office has just asked

Me to fil for a minute or two because our two last speakers of the day here and we just need to get SL system so would you like to come and join you can say hello and introduce you to everybody and hopefully that will be time to get the slides Oriz it’s really really simple come up and then we just press the green button to go forward really straight forward so I’m delighted to introduce to two colleagues you can see in their beautiful uniforms that they both work in military forces so we’ve got Britney

Um who’s in the Navy and we’ve got Bina B and who was going to say it wrong Bina who is in the Army so do you want to tell people just a little bit about your your sort of normal roles and then once the slides come on we can just go into

That yeah so I’m Britney Henry I joined the Royal Navy 4 years ago I knew I wanted to do something in science and Healthcare and it was actually a Navy nurse that I came across and he told me that this role was available in the military they actually paid and they

Funded my degree in full and then I went on to study at Aston University here in Birmingham and now I work down in Portsmouth at the Queen Alexandra Hospital just doing my specialist portfolio and preparing to go abroad to practice as a biomedical scientist so I’m Bina and I graduated

From Kingston University I fully funded it myself and then I decided to join the Army as a military BMS so I actually just did my registration portfolio with the military in Birmingham Hospital Queen Elizabeth and then now I’m based in Portsmouth and that’s where I’m doing my specialist

Portfolio amazing and as if by Magic the slides are almost going to appear so they’ll they’ll a play in slideshow and then once they on slideshow you can just start presentation okay great before we start can I get a show of hands to see

How many of you know or have an idea of what we do in the military as bms’s kind of over there yeah good job to do that no brilliant does anyone have any interest of like joining the military okay should we um I think it should be

Just your first is up on the screen so I think it should thank you okay so our presentation today we’re going to talk to you a little bit about what we do and um basically how we got here as well so our journey about how we started off as

Students and then join the military and what we what we’re doing currently yeah C quite hard perfect so we’re going to start by discussing the training and education requirements for our role clinical placement locations and completion of the ibms registration portfolio we’re also going to talk about personal development opportunities that are

Available to us and finally we’re going to discuss the important role biomedical scientists play in medical teams that are deployed overseas so as you can see on the screen this is essentially a simplified training timeline and it begins in phase one which is what we call basic training

It’s what all soldiers and recruits have to go through and it meanders all the way through to produce hopefully a fully qualified military BMS so for the Army IT training starts in per bright s which lasts up to 14 weeks this is where we learn basic Soldier skills such as navigation section

Attacks field routines and rifle handling during this phase I learned to operate at Peak performances physically and mentally regardless of the situation core values military ethos and discipline is drilled into US within the 14 weeks and for the Navy training begins at HMS rally that’s in Plymouth and this took

Place over a period of 10 weeks recruits come from all of the UK and overseas and it was there that I was given a taste of the skills that I needed to work or train in the future this included learning how to tackle floods and fires when I was at

Sea and finally we’ve got the RAF their training takes place in ARF Halton and that’s also for a period of 10 weeks they do things like general service training they have daily inspections they learn about marching and drill and as you can see we have biomedical scientists across all of the three

Services meaning that nowadays Navy bms’s can deploy to field hospitals and army bms’s can come on ship and this is what we call a truly TR service environment so this is a picture of me um as a graduate from Kingston University where I was a civilian and

Then the picture on the right is on me ready for for the final section attack as a soldier so one key lesson that I learned from basic training was Soldier first and then your trade this was to highlight The Importance of Being of having good soldier skills and not just

Being good at being a biomedical scientist and my favorite phrase from basic training is each man is a link man which means that it’s vital to learn the value of your team so first on the timeline is University so professionally we require the same qualifications as civilian BMS this

Includes an ibms accredited bi medical science degree which I began studying here in Birmingham at Aston University in 2019 I also studied with three other military BMS two of which had completed access to higher education courses and the other like me had done a levels so aside from this there are other entry

Routes into the military this includes coming in as a qualified BMS I.E you’re already holding your hcpc registration alternatively you could be a reservist so these are individuals who want to combine the civilian career with a military one next on the TR training timeline we have clinical

Placement so during the summer term of oh that’s you okay so so CL um initially we start all of us we start our clinical placements at Queen Elizabeth Hospital this is where we do our registration portfolio and whilst we’re there we get rotated around biochemistry hematology transfusion and also

Microbiology the exposure to multiple disciplines makes us aware of how the different areas of pathology fit together and is one of the major difference between military and civilian BMS so next we’re going to talk about our transition to military practice course so this four-month course is where we get introduced to military

Procedures and lab equipment so this includes smaller lower through book analyzers we even have our own military request forms and our own laboratory information management system it’s where we really get to combine all of the skills that we learn at University and on placement and apply them specifically to military settings

So this involves providing blood to what we call Med medical emergency response team and that’s known as Mt or Critical Care air support team called cast essentially we learned how to run an entire lab as a team of three and even prepared for situations where we could potentially be a lone

BMS so after ttmp we have our first postings this is where we expand further expand our clinical skills and we also complete our specialist portfolio we have a presence in three main areas of the UK and are known as defense medical groups defense Medical Group South which is in Portsmouth defense Medical Group

Southeast which is located at fley Park and Royal Center for defense medicine which is at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham so next we’ll explore some personal AA personal um development opportunities that are available to service person so we undertake regular physical training each week and we have Fitness

Tests that we must pass and all of these vary according to service but outside of this there’s loads of opportunities to get involved in sport and currently I’m involved in the Royal Navy women’s Golf Association while I’m looking to get into rock climbing and some hockey and additionally there’s opportunities to

Get involved in Adventure Training so this is more specialized outdoor activities which can be in the UK but also aboard so you get to take on things like mountain biking skiing and even parachuting so we have various coaching mentoring and Leadership courses which are open to service personnels in

Addition to this there are standard learning credits which are available for any courses that you’re passionate about and you get up to £1 175 for the year so make we have to like make sure that we use it cuz every year it gets renewed and people have even drawn um done

Driving courses wine tasting and learned languages using the funds get Bo with and then once you’ve served eight years you get enhanced learning credits and this means that funding goes up to £2,000 a year and this is for three years so you get £3,000 oh £2,000 every

Year for three years and this is all funded by the military so recently me and Britney went on a fundamental Innovation fundamental course which was completely funded by the military and we got a week off work as well to do it this had nothing to do with our jobs we

Just thought we’d have a have a look at something else so yeah there’s loads of opportunities there and there are also other opportunities to take control of your career and contribute to the unit this includes organizing team building and Welfare days there are various annual unit events such as the summer and

Christmas function these are great opportunities to meet your meet other members of the unit in a more relaxed environment so as you can see on the top right that’s when we went to Ben nevest and we climbed that and we got time off work to do that as well cuz that was a

Team building activity and on the bottom left that’s when we went go-karting and that was really fun as well and we got time of work and the one on the bottom right that’s from a Christmas function from last year and it’s always good the functions they’re always lavish and

Fun so next we’ll give you a short Insight onto the work we do on deployment and the training that’s required for it so at this stage we’re fully qualified military BMS ready to deploy however there’s a BMS training school in Birmingham that provides extra support through predeployment training

We also have opportunities to go on exercise where the deployed hospital is replicated and we do this with the people that we’re going to deploy with so this could be other military nurses odps and and radiographers so the picture on the right is actually of a recent trip that

Me and Britney went on to a field Hospital in Colchester this is where we went to help pack kit for deployments for 16 Med rge and the BMS that’s posted there is on high Readiness which means that they could be given 7 days notice to deploy

And sometimes they can even be given 24 hours notice to move which um so then they have to be within 1 hour from the camp this is why it’s vital to always have your kit prepared and packed ready to move deployments can be in areas such as turkey Kenya Norway Nepal and Oman

All of which come with various challenges that ourselves as BMS are trained to overcome um so next we’re going to show you a video of the biggest lab setup we’ve ever had on deployment this video was taken in Camp Bastion in Afghanistan which was established in 2006 Camp

Bastion uh covered an area equivalent to the size of reading the base was home for up to 30,000 International servicemen and women as well as providing accommodation it acted as logistical support center and has a had a substantial field Hospital technical well we’ve got some slides of

Um our setup on deployment so you can see our essential kit and basically the shared spaces with other members of the medical team so here you can see our blood storage units on the right we’ve got centes on the left Sahara in the back our little sharp spin because of course

You’ve got to disposable our waist naturally even their own deployment and that little laptop you can see in front of the Shar spin is our limbs it’s not the biggest setup but it’s all of our essential kit and it actually allows us to to provide a BMS service whil we’re away

Here’s just another image of the deployed lab it’s really up to us to pack all of our kit to um to ensure that all arrives on time and it’s us up to us to figure out how we want to arrange our lab it’s pretty much self-managed and

Only then can you declare that this lab is fit and ready to receive samples so that’s all we got time for today thank you guys for listening thank you [Applause] for