Profile

I have always been fascinated with how things work, the need to understand the world around me and I was inspired by my dad who was an engineer. I grew up in Kent and was the first on my mum’s side of the family to go to University. I firmly believe that hard work and determination can get you anywhere you want!

I am always looking for more things to learn and there is always something new in science. I wanted a career where I felt like I made a difference so the NHS was attractive to me but being a massive introvert I did not want to work directly with patients so the pathology lab is perfect.

In my spare time I love arts and crafts and combine my science career with running an online crochet/ yarn shop.

When patients are sick they sometimes have a ‘sample’ taken to send to the laboratory for a diagnosis. A sample might be some blood or other body fluids, a biopsy (a very small sample) or even a whole organ such as an appendix or lung. When something goes wrong in the body it can be decribed as a pathology. I work in cellular pathology which is where we can understand what is wrong with the patient by looking at cells under the microscope. Biomedical scientists and special doctors called pathologists work together in the laboratory to make sure these samples are preserved well enough to be studied under the microscope. The diagnosis is made and the pathologist tells the patients doctor so that they can get the right treatment for the patient. Using the same knowledge we can also study samples to understand the cause of death.

A typical day in the laboratory starts with a morning huddle. This is where the senior scientists and managers get together to make a plan for the day and make sure there are enough scientists in each area of the laboratory.

Patient samples will come into the laboratory and they will need to be booked onto the laboratory computer system. Each patient is given a unique number so we can track it all the way through the lab. After this the samples need to be ‘dissected’. This is where they are cut into slices no thicker than 5mm. The scientist or pathologist will choose the bits that are sampled based on what the suspected diagnosis is or if they notice anything unusual.

These slices are now placed into plastic cassettes and go through ‘processing’. This is where chemicals are used to remove all the water from the samples and molten paraffin wax is added. When the wax cools down it makes the tissue samples hard and this makes it easier to cut really thin slices using a machine called a microtome.

The microtome has a very sharp blade in it which is used to cut the tissue into slices that are only 3microns thick – that is about the width of 1 human cell (1mm = 1000 microns!). We put these slices onto a glass microscope slide and now we need to stain it so we can see it better under the microscope. There are lots of special stains we can use that tell us different information.

The slides are all digitally scanned so we have a permanent record of the image and now a pathologist can look at this and make their diagnosis.

Throughout my day I also need to help junior staff with problems, attend meetings and look at data from the laboratory such as how many errors have happened, how many documents need to be updated or which staff need training. I am the quality lead scientist which means I am responsible for reporting any quality issues to the managers.

At the end of the day we need to make sure that all the equipment is shut down safely and the laboratory is locked.