University of Wolverhampton - Biomedical Science: An Essential Career in the 'New Normal'

Hello, I'm Dr Martin Koshara and for the last 12 years I've had the pleasure of teaching and working in the Biomedical Science and Physiology department at the University of Wolverhampton. Now we've heard a lot about careers in healthcare because of the Covid-19 crisis and actually what I wanted to do today was talk about another essential career that's been right on the front line to be honest called Biomedical Science. Now Biomedical Science is the science at the heart of healthcare and it's essential in the diagnosis of diseases within the NHS and I wanted to talk a little bit about the roots into Biomedical Science not just for school leavers but also those people who might be thinking about a new career or have come into higher education slightly later in their education career. Now we are supported by the Institute of Biomedical Science which is the professional body of Biomedical Scientists all over the UK and the world. So Biomedical Scientists then play an absolutely essential role in modern medical care. They use real science diagnostic tests if you like in laboratories to diagnose disease in patient samples. They work efficiently and effectively to diagnose disease because they make life-changing decisions. The results they give can change a person's life so they have to be absolutely accurate and they tend to work in one of four disciplines and we'll talk more about that in a while. So Biomedical Scientists have a number of different roles really. They diagnose disease, they help with screening programs such as a cervical screening program, they monitor infections in populations and they also carry out research to actually improve the sorts of science that they can carry out to make sure the diagnosis of disease is more efficient and actually before the COVID-19 pandemic they handled about 150 million samples per year but actually that has grown exponentially and now it's many more millions. And actually the work they do, the results they actually give clinicians help them diagnose over 70 percent of problems in patients because 70 percent of those clinical decisions are based on the science these people use and carry out in laboratories all over the world. Now it isn't just the NHS, we see Biomedical Scientists both in private health care but also in the military supporting soldiers in the theatre of war. Now I could talk about Biomedical Science but let's hear from the Institute of Biomedical Science themselves. Do you know how many times your healthcare has been supported by Biomedical Science? The newborn heel prick blood test is likely to be the first of many encounters you will have throughout your life with Biomedical Scientists and laboratory staff. Every blood test, tissue biopsy, swab or other sample taken in hospital or at your GP surgery will have been analysed by one of our experts. Our work produces the data on which doctors, consultants and surgeons base their diagnoses and plan your treatment. Biomedical Science is at the heart of healthcare. So you can see a really nice, really nice simple explanation of what Biomedical Science actually is. And as I said there is a number of different disciplines that Biomedical Scientists work in. As you can appreciate the Infection Sciences is really important at the moment because of Microbiology and Virology. The Blood Sciences again are increasingly important with this new disease circulating around the world because in the Blood Sciences we have chemists, hematologists and transfusion scientists that look at the balances in the blood and the fluids of the body but importantly the immunologists. And of course these are important especially as we look at how vaccines work to this new and terrible disease. We also have the Cellular Scientists, the Cell Sciences people and they are the Histologists and the Cytologists and they look at tissue and cells to diagnose abnormalities and absolutely they are key in the diagnosis of cancer. Then we have the Genetics and Molecular Pathologists and these newer kinds of scientists in Biomedical Science are actually using the power of reading the code of DNA, the program of life itself to look for issues that can lead to disease later on. And that's a new sort of subject area that has only really been coming to the fore in the last 5 to 10 years or something like that. Now if you wanted to become a Biomedical Scientist you couldn't just walk off the street into a hospital. To become a Biomedical Scientist you need to have done an accredited degree pathway at university and that accreditation is vital because without it you cannot do your training post that you do later on or during your university career and then you cannot without that register for Health and Care Professions Council. Because we also support placements at the University of Wolverhampton as well as many other universities do to actually try and get this training in during your university studies because then as soon as you leave you're accredited and then you can register and you can practice almost straight away. So the title of a Biomedical Scientist is protected. It is a legally protected title and it's legally protected by the Health and Care Professions Council. There's a number of healthcare careers that have this protected title and Biomedical Science is one of them and without being a member of the Health and Care Professions Council professional register you cannot call yourself a Biomedical Scientist and it is this organisation that keeps the quality and the standards that we expect from these vital scientists in the NHS. I mentioned that Biomedical Scientists have been key during the COVID-19 crisis so let's hear again from the Institute of Biomedical Science about what's been going on. Behind every COVID-19 test there is a Biomedical Scientist. Ewan has a temperature, achy limbs and shortness of breath and after talking to an NHS advisor he has come to the hospital for a COVID-19 test. An infection control nurse takes a sample from back of his throat and another from deep in his nostril and sends it to the hospital's virology laboratory. Victoria is a virologist, a Biomedical Scientist who specialises in viruses. She uses a safety cabinet to make the samples safe to work with, then extracts the RNA genome of the virus that might be present. Once it's ready, Victoria prepares the RNA for testing. This makes a DNA copy and then multiplies and measures it, indicating whether the RNA virus was present in the original samples. She analyses the results as they come through, then produces a detailed report and phones the care team. Ewan's test showed that he is positive for COVID-19, so for the safety of the public he will be instructed to self-isolate until he recovers. Biomedical Science, working in testing times, at the heart of healthcare. So there we saw the vital role of the Biomedical Scientist, especially during the current pandemic. Now if you wanted to study Biomedical Science there are degree pathways everywhere but they're not always accredited and the Biomedical Science Awards at the University of Wolverhampton are and we have one of the most long-standing programmes of study which is highly respected all over the country. There are a number of different options depending on how you want to arrive in higher education. I'm going to talk more about these in a minute. First of all we have our Biomedical Science Foundation Year, the BSc Honours and HND Biomedical Science courses, a Foundation Degree in Biomedical Science and a Pathology Laboratory-based version of our BSc Honours in Biomedical Science and they're all suitable for slightly different people. One thing we do have the pleasure of at the University of Wolverhampton and certainly all of my students have benefited from this fantastic place is the Rosalind Franklin Building. It's a 25 million pound investment in science teaching. Every 90 seats are labs, students with tablets working in there, almost paperless in our student-centred environments. It's here where they get the hands-on practical experience that actually will prepare them for a career in the laboratory. And of course because we're having to look at different ways of organising the way people are learning in these buildings due to social distancing, actually the way we're doing it is taking on more and more advanced and technological means. So we're starting to actually think about maybe we can give a lot of the techniques that we need to learn as a Biomedical Scientist through video so we can practice it later in smaller groups. So not only can we socially distance, you get a more effective learning experience which I think is just absolutely fantastic. So if you're thinking, you know, if you're just coming straight into Biomedical Science and you've got the right qualifications, you know you've got some GCSEs, you're level four in English and Maths, you might also have some A-Levels, perhaps preferably Biology or Chemistry along with some others. Or you might have BTECs and really things like a Medical Science or Applied Science BTEC is perfect for Biomedical Science and actually these programmes are new and redesigned and are absolutely innovative in the way they are using their teaching and learning to give our students the best student experience possible. The teachers if you're on these awards are literally award-winning academics and they're all research active so that they know what they're doing, they know about science, they can bring their research into their teaching. We have a number of different lecturer practitioners which actually practice within Biomedical Science so what they can do is they can come in and contextualise the learning so you can use real world examples and understand the sometimes complicated scientific concepts and the idea through all of these teachings to really develop your skills as a Biomedical Scientist so when you're ready to practice you've got some of the skills and knowledge to already build on to become a better Biomedical Scientist. So if you want to know more about courses in Biomedical Science at the University of Wolverhampton please just look on our website which is wlv.ac.uk and actually you all you need to do you look in the top where it says our courses click on that type in Biomedical Science and you'll find out all about the entry qualifications, all about the finance and the sorts of careers you can pursue after graduating from a course like Biomedical Science. So if you want to know more about the trade of a Biomedical Scientist all you need to do is again just type in ibms.org into your web browser and you'll find the Institute of Biomedical Science and they can tell you all about the career and the necessary qualifications to actually study and practice if you like as a Biomedical Scientist if you like.