This week the FY were fortunate to be able to watch Tom Warrender’s Human Guinea Pig show. It was extremely interesting as he showed us just a small selection of jobs that fall under the huge ‘medical’ umbrella. We learnt about vascular science, cardiac physiology, medical engineering, renal and urodynamics, ophthalmic science and respiratory physiology all within a 45 minute show! Then he also explained how we could start to access our future and that there are over 50 different types of jobs in the NHS, with patient care and without. He showed us step by step how we could access many of these jobs and what degrees we would need to take at university right down to our GCSE choices and much more.
Tom started off by giving us a few cool facts, for example, health care scientists are responsible for 85% of the diagnostic tests carried out in hospitals. One of the first careers that we looked at was called ‘vascular science’. Tom told us that vascular science specialises in blood cells, blood vessels, veins and capillaries. What vascular scientists do is analyse any problems their patient has in their blood vessels. He explained the different uses of ultrasound and we learned that only 5% of all ultrasounds are used to check the development of babies in the womb. He showed us different cells, and even showed us the blood vessels inside his throat by using ultrasound, so we could look at his jugular vein and arteries. Next, we looked at the role of a cardiac physiologist, who is not a doctor, but a specialised physiologist. A cardiac physiologist specialises in looking at you heart, and whether it is working efficiently. Tom talked through things like ECG’s (Electrocardiogram), which records electrical signals that coordinate your heart; he exemplified this by showing us a premature ventricular contraction (PVC’s, we feel skipping in our upper chest near the throat when this happens), look like on an echocardiogram.
The third career that Tom told us all about was Medical Engineering, which focuses on the design and development of medical machinery. If you work in medical engineering, you make sure all the medical equipment and machines are fixed and in order, so that all the doctors and nurses can use them. Sometimes, as Tom told us, they get to invent new gear! After looking at a few examples of cool gear, we moved on to our fourth career; Renal and Urodynamics. This looks at the kidneys and bladder of a person, and makes sure that they are all functioning properly, and are healthy. We even got shown an example of a test to check whether your bladder is healthy or not.
Another career that Tom is very enthusiastic about is Ophthalmic science, and using a special gadget called an ophthalmoscope you can see a detailed picture of the eye, however, the patient is not able to see this. However, engineers and computer scientists have developed an app that you can load on to an iPhone, then with the iPhone attached to the ophthalmoscope it is possible to see a detailed picture of the inside of a person’s eye. Tom pointed out the need for engineers and coders to work in the NHS as ‘code’ is regarded as a ‘medical device’ and the code needs to be carefully regulated just as a procedure or equipment does! Using the ophthalmoscope Tom showed us the optic disk, the macular and the optic nerve on the back of the eye.
The next topic that Tom discussed with us was respiratory physiology. A few years ago Tom was part of an asthma study in which he was part of the healthy population on the study. He was able to show us a video of an endoscope travelling through his vocal chords, down the trachea and into his lungs. The doctors took another long tube which had a sharp type of scissor which they used to cut chunks of his bronchial lining off. We were pleased to hear that it didn’t really hurt as there aren’t as many pain receptors inside your body as there are on your skin!
In conclusion, we learnt all about the huge variety of different careers that you can go into in the NHS, as well as this Tom showed us how to search for different roles on the NHS website, where we could find out exactly what degree you need, and other exam grades you need to get each job. Tom led us through a simple step by step tutorial on how to see which subjects and qualifications you needed to go into each career, and even showed us which Universities and colleges you could go to in order to get those degrees. Overall, we enjoyed learning so much about the many careers that we didn’t even know existed until Tom taught us all about them, and we are grateful for the amazing opportunity given to us by the science department.
Evie G, Elizabeth H and Mia R