Profile

Just a snap shot of what I get up to when I’m not in my lab coat….

Top of the world on the West Pennine Moors 🏃🏻‍♀️👟

Santa dash! 👟🎅🏻

My guinea pig Caramel with her babies, Rocky, Peanut and Minnie

As a Clinical Scientist I perform laboratory tests and work out what the results mean for patients.  Diseases that I help to diagnose include leukaemia (blood cancers) and problems patients may have with bleeding – they may bleed for too long when they cut themself or have a nose bleed.  It is my job to figure out why this might be.

For blood cancer, I look at the cells within the blood to see if they are normal or abnormal and make sure the patient is then looked after by the correct doctor which means they can get the right treatment.

There are machines in the lab that process the samples.  These sometimes need cleaning and fixing if they are broken.

Sometimes I use a microscope to look at the blood cells – this makes tiny things look really big, meaning I can see if any blood cells do not look normal.

I also perform checks in the lab called audits.  These are checks to make sure all scientists in the lab are following the correct procedures to keep them safe and to make sure patient’s blood samples are tested correctly – this is a very important job as somebody has given us their blood to look after and we don’t want to lose it.  This would mean they would have to give us some more blood which some people do not like.

I speak to lots of people throughout the day – nurses, doctors, other scientists, patients over the phone, in person or via email to discuss the results of tests.  This is very important as doctors and nurses need to understand the test results before giving patients any medicine they might need.