A couple of weeks ago I came off a virtual meeting. There was a delay and the sound dropped in and out. I should have raised awareness of this or sat back and kept quiet, instead I kept trying to contribute and ended up talking over everyone. This is rude and a trait of mine that I’m super aware of at the best of times. Sometimes I have so many thoughts I just have to articulate them to process and this comes across as super domineering and is especially not good for the introverts around the table. I struggle with it and I try every day to be better, it’s just I fail more frequently than I’d like.
This post isn’t actually about that though. It’s about the fact that I hung up on the call, sat on my sofa and cried. I then engaged in panicked reaching out for reassurance, which just makes everything worse. When I hit this point its usually a warning sign that I’m a) not well or b) so tired I’m not functioning well. It results in me wanting to ostrich and run away from interactions with anyone but my most trusted. Crucially it also stops me being able to self reflect, take the learning and move on in a balanced way.
When I am strung out like this I get stuck on feelings and can’t process enough to really engage with unbiased evaluation. To me that’s what a shame spiral is, the inability to evaluate and therefore move onto the other sections of the reflective cycle. Therefore preventing real learning from the scenario to take place.
Its taken me a long time to see these warning signs in myself. To know when I’m wallowing in self recrimination rather than self reflection.
I sometimes wonder if it’s just me that does this, goes through this, reacts in this way? I don’t wish this on anyone else but in many ways I’m hoping I’m not alone. On the off chance that the Shame Club isn’t a party of one I thought I would talk about it and share some of the things that I’ve learnt to help me deal.
Break the Cycle
The first thing I need to do is to find a way to stop the spiral. Part of the reason for me writing this post is that the writing of it will support the processing. It will help me to move past feeling to evaluation and to put the incident into context. I need to stop relieving the moment and get to the point where I have distance to evaluate and learn.
Now sometimes I need more of a break than others to let this happen. For me as my spirals are often triggered by tiredness, just the process of getting some sleep can enable me to look on things with fresh eyes. If I can concentrate enough a good book can transport me enough, so can a complete change of scene such as a walk/bubble bath/run. Shame spirals were one of the reasons I took up running, I’m so bad at it all I can do is focus on taking one step after another and it breaks the thought process.
Get a Reality Check
Once I’ve broken my descent it’s key for me to really undertake an evaluation step. Was it really as bad as I felt? Was anyone hurt by what I did? What are the ramifications? Is it just my imposter syndrome screaming at me that I should be seen and not heard? This is where checking in with others is more useful. If I do it too early I can only hear the response through the lens of shame. If I get feedback at this point I am able to put it in context and therefore it’s more useful in terms of evaluating what my next steps should be. This process is the start of me regaining some balance.
Own it and Embrace the Learning
No one is perfect! I know we all know this but for me there’s is a gaping chasm between knowing this and feeling/accepting it. I am super aware of my flaws (I mean I bet there are ones I don’t know about, but the ones I’m aware of loom big in my mind). When I mess up, especially linked to a flaw I know I have, I feel the failure of it strongly. There’s no point in ignoring it however, the main thing is for me to acknowledge the failure or ‘not being my best self’ and try to learn from it.
The big thing for me is to try to work with the incident and take learning from that, separating out my emotions. For instance: I talked over someone in a meeting, I should apologise for it, try to be even more aware of that tendency and do it less in the future. The key thing here for me is to commit to reduction rather than setting myself up for future failure. I will do X less, I will do Y better. I acknowledge this is an interative process and that development takes time and continuous improvement.
I also try to work out the triggers for whatever the incident was and therefore consider if there’s anything I can do to support it not reoccurring in future. For instance I’m more likely to fail when I’m tired or unwell. I’m more likely to spiral as a result of that failure if I’m, you’ve guessed it, tired or unwell. The key learning therefore is that I need to take better care of myself, or identify earlier before the failure that I’m not in the best place.
I’m hoping that by hooking my responses and thought process onto the Gibbs reflective cycle that it will support visualisation of the steps I find helpful and might give you a framework if you ever have similar issues to use as a framework to help you through.
I’m writing this blog post on a tube on the way to work. I try not to work on the tube these days, I try to use it as time to get me into and out of the right head space for work. Right now my brain is whirling too much to focus and in circumstances like this I’ve learnt the best thing I can do is get some of those thoughts down into something productive.
I’m an all or nothing kind of girl. I’m not good at doing things in moderation. I’m not good with hierarchy, barriers and boundaries. Sometimes I like to think its why I’ve (to some extent) achieved. It’s my inner voice that moves me on rather than external drivers. The flip side to this is I also don’t know when and how to stop. The same urge that makes me want to cross artificial barriers imposed upon me mean that I struggle to impose them on myself.
This means that I find work life balance a difficult thing to identify sometimes, let alone to achieve.
Learning the hard way
During my PhD I didn’t have a full weekend off for three years. By the time I submitted my PhD and was preparing for FRCPath I had developed a discreet bald patch where I’d lost my hair and was doing a regular battle with angio oedema, where my face would swell when I tried to eat. I submitted my PhD one year early so I could successfully pass FRCPath first time, however the legacy of that time lives on in my deteriorated health.
I grew up thinking that success was about hard work. If you worked hard enough then you would be rewarded. If you got the qualifications then you would get the job. It was a really simplistic view of the world that I think I only woke up to not being true over the last couple of years. The fight doesn’t stop just because you are qualified to step into the role, that is when the fight actually begins. If you use all your energy and will power to cross the line to get the qualifications it will leave you depleted when you have to step into the arena for the true battle.
Succeeding and being good at my job is something that has always been important to me. Lately however I’ve begun to realise that giving it my all, all the time, isn’t in itself enough. I can’t work for the next 25 years until I’m due to retire with the intensity that I have worked for the last 10 + years. I need time away to really be successful. I need time to refresh my mind to enable me to bring the best version of myself to the challenges I face. Creativity needs energy not exhaustion. I don’t really feel yet that I have mastered or even begun to be able to prioritise stepping away in order to achieve this, but at least having the realisation is taking an important step along the way.
Facing the hard truth. We are all replaceable
I used to run, I was awful at it, but never the less I persisted. I haven’t been running since the pandemic started. I arrive home in a ball of flames at the end of the week and my husband spends the weekend putting me back together so that I go out and do it all again. This isn’t sustainable, and as time goes on I feel less and less than me and more and more like an infection prevention automaton. I have given up most of what makes me me to try and deliver for my job because I believe in it. This isn’t a long term strategy however. It is the bits that make me me that also make me good at my job. The other thing is that if something happened to me tomorrow, it is my friends and family that would mourn me. Another infection control doctor would be found. My stuff would be packed up and handed over and at most I would occasionally be brought up in conversation. I know this because I’ve already seen it happen to a colleague.
I worked with an amazing admin guy in my department. He’d been there for 15 years. A few years ago he went home one night, sat in his favourite chair and died. I’d worked with him for 10 years, he pulled my pony tail every time he went past my desk. He left chocolate on that same desk when I was having a bad day to cheer me up. He talked to me about his dogs, his music and his wife. After 15 years working in the department I was one of 3 people who went from work to his funeral. No one from the lab he supported went. My wonderful consultant boss went with me and our clinical lead went to represent the department. 3 people out of 40.
That day was a real revelation to me. The people who I spend more time with than my family may not feel the same way about me as I do about them. If the same thing happened to me would I even get three? Would I be replaced and never discussed in the same way after all those years of service? Sometimes I think my knowledge matters but I’m not convinced that I do. Then I think should it? After all this is a job, its not a family. The problem is as someone who is ‘all in’ sometimes I can find it hard to remember the difference.
Family is everything
Given all the above I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I balance the person that I am, the environment I work in and the need to re-energise and be the best version of myself. This has involved coming to the realisation that the thing that matters most to me and what I need above all else is my family. They mean everything to me. They have been my cheer leaders to get me to where I am, but they are also the ones who have suffered from me having my focus elsewhere. I have missed so many birthdays and special events due to being ‘all in’ elsewhere. Life is not a movie. Life isn’t a 3 part story arch about the workaholic who final finds love, moves to the country and raises sheep. It is however about constant learning and re-evaluation. So here is what I have learnt:
I don’t have the capacity sometimes to set boundaries for myself, but if I’m ‘all in’ for them that that is the start for me of being able to find a way to balance the demands of a job I love with the need to be ‘all in’ with those that matter most.
The top things I’ve learnt:
Spend time reflecting on who you are and what drives you
Know which things refresh you and which thing drain you
If like me you find it difficult to set boundaries find something/someone who can support you in doing so
I am far from having cracked this one but having done the thinking I feel I’ve at least taken some steps in the right direction. Like all things I’ll be taking it one day and one step at a time.
All opinions on this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Working in Infection Prevention and Control is basically about assessing risk. It’s pretty much what I do, what I eat and breath. So today I wanted to post (with that in mind) why I’m tired to the core of my being when I hear the joyful proclamations about the 19th July and so called Freedom Day, and it’s not just me others are definitely feeling it too.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the strong urge to ‘get back to normal’. This is a very human trait. We all like to feel in control and this has been a prolonged period of high stress and uncertainty. I suppose my frustration is with the failure to really communicate that normality comes with a cost. It will likely bring economic benefits but it will cost some people their lives and NHS workers just a little bit more of their sanity. If as a society we agreed that the economics were worth it I would grudgingly keep my mouth shut but we’re not even having the conversation. There is no such thing as a free lunch and at the moment society is passing me the bill when I’m not sure I’ve brought my wallet.
It’s All About the Shades of Grey
For cognitive comfort we tend to feel comfortable seeing the world in black and white. The reality is (as with most things) that the world and decisions are made up of shades of grey. It is possible to live in a world where we are neither in complete lock down nor where everything is effectively considered back to normal and presenting increased risk.
When I’m dealing with an outbreak in a hospital setting (I acknowledge the situations aren’t identical) I bring in a series of measures to find the source and stop transmission. Often because of the risk to patients and staff you do all these things at the same time, in order to maximise your risk reduction. Then once you have identified the source and stopped further cases being identified you gradually reduce your measures.
You do your intervention reductions in this way for a number of reasons:
You often don’t know what is having the greatest impact so a step wise reduction enables you to learn more about how you might control a similar outbreak better in the future. You will know which interventions are most important.
Reducing your measures one at a time enables you to continue to monitor your cases. If they come back you know you need to maintain that intervention for longer and maybe step down others with a lesser impact first.
It tells you more about whether you have effectively dealt with your source without putting large amounts of people at risk again.
It stops you going all the way back to square one if you aren’t where you thought you were. You’ve worked hard to get things under control, so you don’t want to return to where you have an escalating scenario.
Stopping basically all of your public health measures in one go, masking, social distancing, most contact isolation etc without taking a staggered approach means that not only are you rolling the dice on your main intervention (vaccination) working in isolation, but also you are failing to gather the information you need to support staggered reintroduction of key control measures moving forward if it doesn’t.
Risk Assessment and Personal Choice
One of the things that has really struck me is that we are moving from a place where that risk assessment and risk reduction is guided at national level to personal assessment.
In many ways there is nothing fundamentally wrong with personal risk assessment. We ask healthcare staff to do this in clinical situations on a daily basis. What do I mean when I’m talking about personal risk assessment. In healthcare it could be something like: You are going in to take blood from a 4 year old child. Before you go into the room you might gather the following information in order to assess the risk and take steps to reduce it:
Is the child on its own?
Do they react badly to needles – are they scared?
Do you know the child? Do you have a relationship where they are more likely to trust you?
Do you have safety needles available to reduce the risk of a sharps injury?
The difference with the government approach to risk assessment and personal responsibility is that we are asking people to do this who are:
not necessarily used to undertaking this kind of assessment in relation to infection
not necessarily accessing the information/evidence to enable them to make such an assessment
It is hard enough working your way through the information and evidence that is related to SARS CoV2 even if it is your job. We are asking the entire of England to be able to do this with little or no support. The quality of information out there is highly variable and often not context specific to make it particularly usable. There is plenty of misinformation out there which could lead to individuals with the best of intentions making bad decisions.
Mixed Messages
This then brings me onto the mixed messages. The government is telling people to use the evidence to make their own risk assessments and then supporting events that are contrary to a lot of the information we are saying is important in making those risk assessments.
The evidence still shows that masks will be important in confined spaces or in areas with high people density. We are at the same time encourage events where people in their thousands meet without those measures included. You can say that the research events are there so you could obtain data to improve future measures and risk assessments, although when only 15% of those attending complete the post event testing the outcomes become dubious. Outside of the research events however, large numbers of people are gathering in public settings, such as Trafalgar and Leicester Square, with no testing or monitoring. These events cannot be said to support the same goal.
It is not rocket science that combining alcohol and emotion can lead to the abandonment of key sections of the risk assessment process.
One of the other things we need to talk about is that personal risk assessments are fine, but in this particular circumstance your risk assessment and behaviour directly also impacts my risk. Mask wearing is about protecting others, so if you opt out of wearing a mask and I wear mine, I bear the brunt of your decision.
We are also not talking enough about how the knowledge linked to vaccination may impact on risk assessment. I know a lot of people who feel like SARS CoV2 doesn’t impact on them any more because they are double vaccinated. In healthcare we are seeing a lot of people who are still getting pretty unwell despite their vaccination status. They are not hospital unwell, but they are still pretty unwell, can’t get off the sofa unwell. They are also still able to pass on the virus to others in their household, at work, or elsewhere. Some of the people then exposed will not be able to have the vaccine, such as children or those with certain underlying conditions. They can therefore still get very sick. Again, the transmitter may not experience such extreme personal consequences but they can cause them for others.
The government messaging doesn’t strongly support prevention of harm to others. Personal choice makes it sound all about the person. A pandemic response however is about as much of a group effort as you can imagine mounting. Personal choice undermines all of what we have been trying to message and removes that shared responsibility.
If we are truly serious about supporting individuals to make their own risk assessments then we need to do a much better job of giving them a framework and high quality information in order to make it. We also need them to understand the consequences of making an incorrect risk assessment. I have no answers on this one, just anxiety and fear about where the current approach is leading us.
I’ve been a football fan for almost my entire life. I’m an Aston Villa fan so I know quite a lot about loss, quite a lot about hope, followed by broken dreams. So Sunday’s England game is not my first road show. I have also faced a fair number of road blocks on the road to success. Most people look at my career path and see success and progress. I look at it and see all the people who told me I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t make it, and that I didn’t have what it takes. I see the fire and determination that built up in me to show them they were wrong. It’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about lifting others up. I’m no stranger to failure, but my experiences have taught me to believe that failure is actually critical to success. We come back from it stronger. We also (if we take the time) come back wiser, having learnt the lessons it offers us.
My bad relationship with failure started early
When I was at secondary school I took a history exam, I got 96%, my father jokingly asked what happened to the other 4%. I took it to heart and was crushed by my ‘failure’.
No member of my family has ever failed an exam, not a driving test, not an academic test, nothing. It was just not done or considered a possibility.
So imagine my horror when I became sick whilst doing my GCSE’s. I went from planning to sit 11 GCSE’s to only being able to go to school for an hour a day and being allowed to sit only Maths, Duel Science and English. I was well enough in the build up to revise for a single weekend. I had been told that all plans to attend university needed to be revised and that I would be lucky to attend Sixth Form. I was a failure. People were planning for my complete academic crash and burn. This was super hard for the girl who had never considered anything else but an academic future.
So I took a beat, or, in reality, quite a few, and decided screw it. I would not be defined by being ill, I would not be defined by being a failure. I got my 5 GCSE’s and found a Sixth Form that would take me. The first year of Sixth Form I still couldn’t attend normally. I did 2 A-levels, Biology and Drama. I also did General Studies, mostly as I didn’t need to turn up for class. My Drama classes were end of day, so I could crash out. It was only the Biology that was the stretch. In my second year I realised I needed a third subject to go to uni. I found a Psychology teacher who allowed me to attend classes at evening school as well as during the day. I covered the minimum amount of topics to be able to pass the exam. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I would overcome. I got my 4 A-levels, I came second in my year and I got into Uni. I took a year off in between as I still was not well so that I could maximise my chances. Needless to say this journey left me a fair number of hang ups about not only failing, but not being able to keep up and whether I was ever going to be good enough again to be accepted by my peers.
My rocky journey to learning to, if not love, then at least to appreciate failure
Since our rocky start, failure and I have gradually come to an uneasy détente. I try to avoid it at all costs and it reminds me that it is an ever-present part of life. Rather like that relative/friend who always turns up at parties, even if they haven’t actually been invited. In recent years, we’ve spent an increasing amount of time in each other’s company and, although it surprises no one more than I, I actually have some good things to say about about the F word thatcan make you better in the long run.
Sometimes you need to feel the fear
Let’s start with the easier things to like. I often talk to my students and mentees about the benefits of feeling the fear. Fear of failure can be overwhelming, leading to paralysis. However, if you can manage the fear it can be used to motivate and focus the mind. This is especially true with high-stakes assessments, such as exams or dissertations. There are different ways that can be used in order to harness the fear of failure to your advantage: from being prepared far enough ahead that the fear is spread over time, to working with peers to support bench marking and fear control. Different strokes for different folks. The main thing is to not hide from it, but acknowledge it and manage it to your advantage.Failure, however, comes in all shapes and forms, not just as high-stakes encounters. It happens in leadership conversations, data analysis and day to day life. When the inevitable happens, and it is inevitable, you need a plan for how to address it. Below are some of my tips about how I face, process, and learn from failure.
Separating the failure from the person
I often shock people when I say I fail all the time, but it’s true. I fail to have conversations in the way I want, I fail to always be there for my team in the way I want to and I most certainly fail to keep on top of my workload. That’s before I even begin to talk about failing to have any work life balance or to give my husband the attention he deserves.
One of the things that has really helped me to manage some of the guilt and fear linked with these failures is understanding that most of them are linked to roles that I play. That doesn’t make them any less significant, but it does enable me to box them and learn from them without them creeping into everything I do and impacting on how I feel about myself as a person. Dr Cloutman-Green often needs to do better and learn from failure in terms of how that outbreak phone call went. That doesn’t mean that Dream is a failure at all she does. It’s about placing sufficient boundaries on the failure to give me distance to permit reflection and learning.
Allowing time to grieve and emotionally process
Now, you may all be better people than I and leap straight into the ‘learning’ post-failure. I’m afraid I don’t have that much mental strength. I need ‘wallow time’. Time to process the emotions linked to what’s happened, so I can move forward and reach a point where I have the cognitive space to reflect. Reflection for me needs to have the emotional response removed. I don’t believe in bottling up my emotions for a later melt down so I allow myself a grieving period. This is normally 48 hours-(it can be a week if it’s something big) where I allow myself guilt-free to feel. To express (in an appropriate way) my frustration/anger/disappointment targeted at the failure. This helps me understand the level to which the activity linked to the failure mattered to me. Is it worth repeating, do I care enough to end up potentially back in this place? I usually do this in the company of my two coping mechanisms: cake and gin. They’ve been my companions in failure for over 10 years, so they are experts in handling me and getting me back to a balanced viewpoint.
Devoting time to reflection to support learning once the grieving us done
So we’ve acknowledge that the failure sucks. We’ve learnt that we care enough about whatever it was linked to that we are prepared to put on the Big Girl Pants and get back into the foray. Now is the time to sit down and learn the lessons in order to reduce our chance of ending up back with cake and gin.
If the failure is linked to things like paper or grant failure, now is the time to open that dreaded feedback and spend some time with it now your emotions are under control. Which parts of it are the things you secretly knew were true? Which parts, despite feeling harsh, can be used to make what you’ve done better for the second time around? If it’s for an exam, which parts didn’t go well? How will your planning and preparation address these next time? If it’s that you sucked when having that conversation or argument, then now is the time to reflect on why and be prepared to dive back in there and try it again. Hopefully the next time will be better.
It’s rarely as bad as it feels in the moment
Some of the time I take when reflecting and learning lessons is to think: if this had happened to my best friend, what would I say to her? We are often our own worst critics. As well as the learning, and sometimes to help with this, thinking of how you would handle this as a friend means that you can review it from a different viewpoint. This can not only help your learning but also put it in a context that may enable you to be just a little kinder to yourself.
Failure is context specific, so find the right people to support your thinking
If you can’t manage distancing during reflection, this is the time to call on your champions in order to get them to help you. My husband, who is a great fan of telling me that experiencing a little failure would be good for me, fulfils this for me. I will arrive home in floods of tears because I haven’t met X deadline. He will ask “did anyone die?” No. “Did anyone get fired?” No. “Was anyone hurt in anyway?” No. “Then either let it go or put it in late, there will always be another X.”
Sometimes we all get so bogged in the weeds of what we should be doing that we find it difficult to put our failures in the context that they deserve. Can you try again? Almost always. So why are you still here? Learn the lessons and go try again. Good luck with that. If you fail I’ll be here with my good friends gin and cake to help you recover, reflect and learn.
All opinions on this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Music has always been an important part of my life, from singing with the Birmingham Royal Ballet for eight years before Uni, to the freedom I find dancing (badly) whether it be in my kitchen or the lab. I’m not knowledgeable, but few things hold memories and modulate my emotions is the same way as listening to music, be that classical, alternative or pop. The key moments and people in my life all have music linked to them: from the Blue Danube for my sister to Dean Martins’ Somewhere Beyond the Sea as the first dance at my wedding.
I have written dissertations, produced my PhD thesis and undertaken specific experiments, all linked to specific pieces. In fact I really struggle to do much in silence. I’m not very good at only doing one thing at once. For me,, despite it being counter-intuitive to some, music helps me focus rather than acting as a distraction. The only time I can work comfortably in silence is when I’m verbalising to support memory, i.e. revising or learning lines.
In an episode of ‘How I met your mother’ Barney (one of the main characters) introduced the idea of a ‘Get Psyched’ mix. I found this idea really useful and have since produced my own ‘Get Psyched’ playlist which I use to address particular challenges I face in work. For today’s post I thought I would share how I use them and give some example tracks for each. Warning – I enjoy cheese and angry girl music so my taste will not suit everyone. I make no apologise for the smell of fromage coming from this post.
Music to Boost my Confidence
We all have days when imposter syndrome hits. As Healthcare Scientists, we also have high stress key assessments, such as FRCPath, that need to be faced. One of the key times I have used a playlist was during my 4 days of FRCPath examinations. I listened to a set of 10 songs to train my brain to get into the right headspace. I would listen to them whilst walking to the examination centre. I would listen to them at lunchtime. I would listen to them in breaks if I felt that I was starting to go into an anxiety loop. All of them took me back to a space where I could focus on why I was doing this high-stakes exam. They helped me focus on the finish line rather than being distracted by the steps along the way. They brought me back to be able to see the big picture. In a space where I felt out of control they gave me routine. It was the same 10 songs. I didn’t need to add to my cognitive load of thinking about what I wanted to play. They freed me and, by the time I reached the end, I had my game face on and I was ready to face anything.
One Off High-Stakes Events
Music for me in this context is when I need to hit my ‘movie moment’. You can picture it: It’s that moment in a movie where it is reaching its denouement. They are about to face that crucial encounter/combat/story moment. The music comes on and (as my husband says) it’s all about the slow walk into the camera.
These are usually one or two songs that I will play in the lead up to a difficult/high-stakes moment: sometimes a meeting that I’m worried about, sometimes a presentation that’s making me nervous. It has to hit my soul fast and hard. It has to make me want to sing out loud. It needs to make me want to strut. If you ever see me walking up and down a corridor mouthing to myself, this is usually during one of these moments. So much of how individual events turn out are based on the mood and the mental space you are in when you walk through a door. I like to make sure I do it in slow-mo with presence!
Music to Reflect and/or to Boost Your Mood
Sometimes music for me is a way of allowing me to express negative as well as positive feelings. No one is up beat all the time. Working within Healthcare Science, and especially as a clinical academic, there’s a lot of failure: grant failure, paper rejection, barriers based on professional background. That’s before we even talk about being a woman in science. When I get grant rejections etc. I always say to my students that I allow myself to mourn for 48 hours. I then get myself together and get back on that horse. Music is key to this. I play my angry girl music and process my disappointment in a focussed way that allows it to be to put in a separate box from the rest of my working and home life.
Once I have spent my allotted 48 hours, I put on music that brings me back to myself. Fighting music to get my head back in the fight. It draws a line under the wallowing and brings me back to a place where I can draw on0 learning from the failure I’ve just experienced without it being tied to negative emotions. I challenge the world to ‘bring it on’. I’m ready!
We’ve all been there. It’s late and you’re still in the lab. You’re tired and you have just one more thing that you need to do before you go home: You need something with a beat to energise you, something you can sing to in order to help you keep awake as caffeine requires leaving the lab. For this I generally have my girls: Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. I have been caught by my old consultant dancing with tubes across the lab to Single Ladies and I make no apologies for it.
The other times I use this kind of music with a really defined beat is when I’m writing. It helps me keep the tempo up and my production level high. When I have a deadline the music definitely goes on. As time goes on, if needed, I tune out the words and I just type or pipette to the beat and get into a zone that means I can work for hours. Without music getting into this particular head space can take hours. By using the right music I can get there in a couple of tracks.
I’m writing this as I’ve found music such a helpful tool in terms of getting me into the head space I need to occupy in order to succeed. I also thought it might be helpful to explain to those people who don’t use music in this way and think that it’s just a distraction tool from getting things done, that the opposite may be true. We all work and focus differently. I’m at my least productive in silence. If I put my headphones in, understand that it’s not that I’m ignoring you. It’s because I’m getting into the headspace where I do my best work. Also, if you hear Freak on a Leash by Korn or Head Like a Hole by Nine Inch Nails through my office door, approach with chocolate or caffeine in hand as some significant rejection is likely to have occurred.
One final thing. This post is in honour of the fantastic She’miah. She’miah is our team PA. She’s truly amazing and she’s leaving in 2 weeks. I will miss our bathroom office disco pick me ups more than I can say This last one is for you girl!
I’ve had a few encounters recently that have led me to write this blog. I’m not writing it as an expert; This isn’t anywhere near my field. I’m writing to share my experiences and learning in case it helps others. Apologies, as it’s not a short read.
I’m challenged by some people I that I’m too worried about raising the profile of women in science, of talking too much about ‘female’ issues, and of challenging my colleagues too frequently. A really respected mentor once said to me that he didn’t think actions against women in the workplace still happened. I shared some stories and pointed out that they still did, they just didn’t happen to him, where he could see them or when he was paying attention to them. I count myself lucky that nothing really serious has ever happened to me at work, but I shouldn’t have to count myself as lucky: they just shouldn’t happen.
I have another post brewing about everyday sexism in the workplace, but this one is different. This one is about why I set out becoming the ‘obstinate head strong girl’ that I aspire to be!
I finished my undergraduate degree in 2002 and spent a year working before returning to undertake an MRes. This was my first experience of full-time ‘proper’ work. I took a six month temp contract for a council, working in their business development office. It was a mostly male floor, supported by myself, two other part time admin staff (both female students) and a lovely older lady who managed the team. My job was to support the officers in tasks such as typing up letters. Yes, they wrote by hand as some of them still didn’t know how to use a computer; I also ran reception, took minutes, that kind of thing.
The Problem is that You are Too Friendly
I’d been there about a month when I was in the post/stationary room stamping that day’s mail. One of my older male colleagues came up behind me and stuck his erection in my back and grabbed my breasts. I stood there, stock still, in complete shock. I didn’t know what to do. These things didn’t happen to me: I was the nerdy girl not the pretty girl, I had no experience of how to handle this kind of breach (I am not implying that pretty girls should know, or have to put up with this either). After what felt like hours (but was more likely a few minutes) where he spoke to me about what we should do next, I shoved him away and ran out of the room.
I went to my boss, the person responsible for me, and told her what had happened. She said she would speak to her boss, who also happened to be the boss of everyone on the floor. I recovered from my shock and got angry whilst I waited, but I was sure there would be censure and we could all put this behind us. She came back and we talked. She explained to me that I was overtly-smiley and chatty with my colleagues. This could be misconstrued and, in future, I should probably just take steps to not be alone with the man that had done it. That was it. The married man with multiple children could do what he wished as it was my friendly demeanour that was the issue.
I spent the next four months being hyper-aware of when I could go into rooms on my own, to be friendly, but not too friendly. As my contract end-date rolled up, I experienced a similar repeat performance from the same individual. It wasn’t as bad this time as I had learned from the first event, but I just couldn’t let it go. What if he went further with someone else, what if he did it to someone else who wasn’t in the privileged position I was in to ‘let it go’. On my last week with the council I emailed HR directly to express my sadness over the way the situation had been handled. They told me to get a cab down and speak to them. I did. I recounted the event, the way it had been handled, the way I felt. The guy got suspended on full pay whilst an investigation was undertaken. I was called back in to repeatedly account for the event and my actions. It was determined that as it was my word against his nothing could be done. I learnt early that even when people listen, accountability is not always the result. No policy was changed. At least the guy had a note on his record in case he did it again so that it was no longer the ‘future girls’ word against his.
I’m ‘lucky’: that was the worse thing in a workplace that has ever happened to me. We all the know of the labs where you wouldn’t apply to work at because of the way the PI behaves, or the ‘expectations’ placed on the post docs if they want to advance. It didn’t interfere with my progression. It did, however, teach me an important lesson about the importance of bystanders. However annoying the bad behaviour of the individual was, the worse thing for me was that the people I trusted and who held responsibility for my safety at work chose to make it about me being too smiley, rather than address the action of the person who had breached barriers and made me feel unsafe. I swore that I would never be that bystander and I would support others so they would not feel as alone as I did in that workplace.
The Problem is that You Are Not Friendly Enough
Roll on some years and I’m now working as a scientist with a part-time academic contract. I’ve learnt the lesson taught to me about not being too friendly, about boundaries at work, about always keeping it professional so my actions couldn’t be used against me. I’m working as the only microbiologist on a research project. The PI on the grant begins to spend a lot of time with the other female researcher. Late night drinks, wine in the office, that kind of thing. I stick to my guns about being valued for what I can add to a project: that doesn’t require me to be available to have drinks with the boss at 9pm. Suddenly, protocols are written that are not technically appropriate, papers are written without a standard authorship order, and presentations and conference trips are handed on the basis of time spent with the PI. When queries and issues are raised, I’m now told that I’m not committed enough, not friendly enough, I’ve not invested enough in building relationships outside of work structures. Unlike before, my future is impacted because I have not walked the tightrope of being approachable well enough. The difference this time is that, although I cried, I simultaneously empowered myself to leave by looking for funding to support an exit. Again, I was fortunate enough to have a way out, to be a clinical academic rather than academia being my only option. I had also started to learn the power of finding my tribe, and making sure that I always had support from other embedded around me. This enabled constructive challenge of my perceptions, but also assurance when things went awry.
Why are you Reacting to Such Little Things? It’s only people being friendly/joking
I’ve now been working as a scientist for 17 years. Issues crop up less frequently the higher you climb up the ladder. However, when they do they always feel like high stakes. I’m no longer in a position where I could easily find another post, co-applicants on grants are harder to switch around as the world we inhabit is small, and relationship building is a key part of my role. So do things still happen?
Sadly, the answer is yes. The thing that makes the incidents happening now worse, in many ways, is that they get laughed off as being linked to me being overly sensitive. I still try to embody the friendly girl I was at 22 without opening myself up to unwelcome physical acts at work. I have, however, on 3 occasions being kissed full on on the mouth in unsolicited encounters with male members of staff. None of it threatening, like when I was in my first job, but still unwelcome. Blocked doorways that, as you’ve tried to go through, have resulted in a facial assault because ‘its Christmas’ or because it’s someone’s ‘last day and they just want to say thank you’. I’m by no means prudish but the only person who gets to kiss me on the mouth is my husband! Uninvited physical intimacy is just not OK. It always comes as a shock and it always takes me back to being a 20 year old with no coping mechanisms standing in a post room.
What happens most frequently however are the comments. Just before the pandemic I was in Paris at an academic meeting. The organiser forgot to book my second night in the hotel. I’m sitting there in a room full of senior male academics at the dinner when the organiser came through and said I had no room. The most senior man in the room responded by saying ‘don’t worry about booking her in the extra night, we’re in Paris, there are more than enough brothels where she could go and work in’. Every man in that room laughed. No one called him out, no one indicated that the comment was humiliating and inappropriate. I didn’t know what to say and so sat there in silence as they laughed away. This isn’t a one-off event. The ‘little ladies’, ‘sweethearts’ etc. may feel innocuous enough but are too frequently used in conversations to undermine women in the room. That’s not to say I’m anti-endearment. I have plenty of colleagues where we have built up relationships over the time where I welcome this reinforcement of our relationship. It is different to do it when your relationship capital doesn’t justify it, or when you are doing it in order to enforce power or hierarchy.
So why have I written this post? I want to let people know that these behaviours happen. It’s unwelcome and it’s not up to the women involved to modify who they are in order to not tempt others to behave badly.
Here, therefore, are a few of my thoughts about how we can all act differently:
Don’t be a bystander! Know that if you are in the room you have a duty to act as the impacted individual may not be in a position to do so.
Find your tribe so you have support for when (and hopefully if) these events occur.
Talk about your experiences so that we can raise awareness, share learning, lead improvements and, most importantly, so others don’t feel alone.
Know that you have more power than you feel like you do. There are people out there who are ready, willing, and able to support you.
If someone comes to you with their story remember that you have a duty of care. Don’t brush things under the carpet because it is easier to do nothing than deal with a situation.
Finally, to all my obstinate headstrong women out there who are standing up and challenging, I applaud you. I appreciate all you are doing now, I appreciate the fact that you are leading the way and that you are members of my tribe. To all those who consider me difficult for calling out these situations when I see them, I understand why I make you uncomfortable, but I have no plans to change. In fact I plan to grow into this role more. In my opinion we could all do with a channelling a little Elizabeth Bennett from time to time.
All opinions in this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
It’s the end of Pride Month 2021, but that doesn’t mean that the fight for equality has ended. Healthcare scientists that are part of the LGBT+ community talk about why representation is important to them.
Francis Yongblah, Microbiology Laboratory Manager and HSST Trainee.
As a Gay, Asian Healthcare Scientist, representation of the LGBTQ+ community in Healthcare science is crucial to me. I have been a Healthcare Scientist for just over 12 years and in that time I have experienced and been exposed to homophobia and prejudice in the laboratory workplace. Although these incidents were very early in my career, these scenarios have always stayed in my mind and something that I have never forgotten. Early on in my career, I felt that I had to hide who I was as an individual and could not actually be me for fear of being judged or treated unfairly. These scenarios made me worry that, because of my characteristics of being a gay man, my professional development and career would have been hindered. No healthcare scientist should feel like this, and it’s important for everyone to recognise the attributes and contribution that a diverse workforce can bring to a service, team and the positive impact it can have on patient outcomes.
I have worked hard as an LGBTQ+ Scientist in order to ensure that my career has been able to develop and I can go as far as I am able to and not to be held back by my sexuality. I feel it key to have representation for the healthcare scientist workforce in order to be able to recognise how key it is to have a diverse workforce, as well as recognising that there are LGBTQ+ Healthcare Scientists within the workforce. We’ve now come a long way from when my career had just started out and I feel proud to have my organisation and the NHS represent and support LGBTQ+ Healthcare Scientists. There has also recently been a lot of support from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (IBMS) to promote the LGBTQ+ Healthcare Scientists in our workforce.,
Kip Heath, Healthcare Scientist and Science Communicator
For me, it’s essential that we foster a workplace environment (and, indeed, a society) in which people are accepted regardless of their gender or sexuality. I’m a queer woman married to a cis heterosexual man. He’s a wonderful and supportive individual and the only person I could imagine taking on the world with. But, to that outside world, we are a standard heterosexual couple. On the one hand, that can be an advantage as I can hide my sexuality fairly easily. However, there have been workplaces that I’ve not felt comfortable or accepted as myself. But I have found that my identity can be easily erased, even by other members of the LGBT+ community.
Now I work in leadership positions where I need to provide support across the healthcare science workforce. My boss talks about the importance of bringing your authentic self to work and leading by example. Our workforce is hugely diverse and it’s important that we demonstrate that. I want to make sure that LGBT+ healthcare scientists in our Trust never feel like they need to hide themselves at work and that there are people that they can open up to if they have any issues. In my role as a science communicator, I raise awareness of healthcare science careers to students and show them that the profession is open to LGBT+ scientists, and that their sexuality is not a barrier to progression.
Anthony De Souza, Practice educator for HCS, HEI lecturer & LGBT+ Forum co-chair
Representation is important to me because, when I grew up, there was no one in my life or on TV that was like me. This added to a feeling of invisibility and isolation, making me feel like I didn’t matter and that there was no place for me in society. I’ve been lucky enough to feel safe enough at work to be myself these days, but everyone’s situation within an organisation will differ.
We know that diversity equates to strength but what are we doing to create an inclusive space for scientists? Science is a diverse and ever changing space where a variety of perspectives yields better conversations, we need an environment that actively supports that. We also need to recognise that much of the discrimination individuals may face happens before they’ve even accepted a job offer, this could be binary choices on demographic questions or uniformity of interview panels.
To be our best at work we have to commit our energy and focus for the good of patients’. We can only do this if we don’t have to constantly edit how we act to fit a pre-defined notion of ‘normal’, react in real time to how we’re perceived or routinely have to deflect micro-aggressions.
Shining a light on excellence throughout the workforce of scientists from different gender identities, sexual orientation, disability, age or race is important for visibility. We need role models that we can relate to and learn from. This also challenges the wider communities’ pre conceived notions of what a professional usually looks, sounds and acts like.
It all started with a conversation Help us keep that conversation going and enjoy some great events along the way!
Rise Of The Resistance is a digital festival of creative responses to Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), on 3 – 5 June 2021.. Curated by NOSOCOMIAL, an award-winning collaboration of Healthcare Scientists and theatre makers which hosts performances, panels and events.
We have events designed for:
Children and families.
Those interested mainly in the science.
Those mainly interested in the creative pieces.
A grown up audience (due to language content i.e. swearing).
Healthcare Scientists are 5% of the NHS workforce in the UK, responsible for 80% of diagnoses. Rise Of The Resistance celebrates the impact of Healthcare Science. It seeks to reinforce relationships between Healthcare Scientists, patients, families and the public, believing that better communication and understanding are vital for managing future threats to global health such as AMR.
NOSOCOMIAL comprises around 25 scientists and artists. We won the 2019 CSO Partnering Patients and Citizens Award, and 2020 Antibiotic Guardian award for Public Engagement. Rise Of The Resistance is our first festival.
Events For Children and Families
SOCK THE PUPPET – aimed at families and children aged 7 and under
Fri, 4 June 2021 – 10:30 – 11:30
A story for children about Socks, Science, Superbugs and Making Friends, narrated by Stephanie Houtman
Meet Sock the Puppet. Sock is excited to go and sing for the children in Hospital with Ms Clown. Sock loves the Hospital. It is always clean and tidy.
The children love Sock’s singing. All the children hug Sock.
When Sock catches all the bugs that make the children poorly, Sock has an adventure to the cleanest, tidiest place in the whole Hospital: The Laboratory.
Can you help Sock find a way back to Ms Clown and the children?
Join us at Rise Of The Resistance for the story of Sock, narrated by Stephanie Houtman (Peppa Pig Live), directed by Saskia Marland, with a special appearance by Sock.
After you book tickets, you will receive a worksheet to make your own Sock at home, designed by artist and maker Abi Bown.
Created by the team behind Nosocomial and Remember, Remember! – playwright Nicola Baldwin, and Healthcare Scientists Vicki Heath and Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green BEM, of Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Sock The Puppet will also be available as a podcast.
With thanks to Eibhlin Jones, Laura Walsh, Amy Sutton and Tara Kearney.
REMEMBER, REMEMBER – aimed at families and children up to GCSE age
Sat, 5 June 2021 – 11:00 – 12:00
Join our time-travelling zoom Healthcare Science in a detective drama about the “True” story of the Gunpowder Plot. For ages 5+ to 105+
A Zoom storytelling science drama.
REMEMBER, REMEMBER! is a pre-recorded Zoom drama. You will receive a link to watch the online premiere.
Activity books, and script, will also be sent out so people can take part at home.
London, 2021. Healthcare Scientists Lily, Rosa, and Frank receive a mysterious message for ‘HELPE’ on one of the machines in their hospital laboratory.
London, 1605. Plague stalks the land, leading to unrest… and a plot to blow up the King and Parliament. Guy Fawkes is arrested and the race begins to track the rest of Gunpowder Plotters.
Remember, Remember tells the amazing story of how three Healthcare scientists set out to foil the Gunpowder Plot, with the help of nine year old Princess Elizabeth, a malfunctioning MALDI-TOF machine and the weird and wonderful mysteries of Microbiology, Haematology, Biochemistry, Immunology, hand-washing, and… time travel.
And they need your help.
with
LILY / SIR JASPER – Jennifer Daley
ROSA / TOWER GUARD – Becky Simon
FRANK / GUY FAWKES – Jonny Wright
PRINCESS ELIZABETH – Tara Kearney
Produced by NOSOCOMIAL
By playwright Nicola Baldwin and Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green, Lead Healthcare Scientist at GOSH. Activity Packs created with Anthony Manuel DeSouza, with input from Fionnuala Wilkins at GOSH school, and Amy Sutton of GOSH Youth Forum.
Thanks to Hannah Jones, Peter Hamilton Dyer, Abi Bown.
Originally produced for Pathology Week 2019, supported by HSEWG and The Royal College of Pathologists (RCPath) as an online drama for children and families in hospital isolation due to illness, revived in 2020, and made available thanks to the Society for Applied Microbiology, as the whole country went into isolation..
We hope it will provide an informative and entertaining way to learn about viruses and bacteria, and that you enjoy watching it at home.
IF I DON’T PLAY I WON’T UNDERSTAND. Plus PPI panel -an interactive drama experience for the whole family
Sat, 5 June 2021 – 14:00 – 15:00
Welcome to the “Bacterial Leisure Centre”! We are the best fitness centre for bacteria in the microbiome to train for bacterial success!
Our Leisure Centre is located in the heart of the breathtaking Microbiome Resort, set in a 2,700 square feet of the Gut. The Centre is provided with anatomy room, gym, quorum sensing zone, reproduction area, and many other 1st class facilities.
Our team of experienced trainers will coach and guide you in this adventure of becoming bacteria, and they will make sure you will have an unforgettable experience.
What do you need to do?
Sign up to a free virtual taster session on Saturday the 5th of June @2pm.
Be prepared to renounce your humanity for the duration of the taster session.
As part of our fitness activity, we will ask you to play games and move your body.
No previous fitness experience is required, but be ready for a lot of fun and games activity.
“If I don’t play I won’t understand” is an interactive digital game performance, combining transmedia storytelling and fictional reality with games and movement activities.
Inspired by choose-your-own-adventure books, audiences are invited to sign up to a virtual “Bacterial Leisure Centre” where they renounce their humanity to train to become bacterias.
After a welcoming virtual tour of the Centre, the audience can choose their own adventure by deciding which training room they want to enter. Once in the room, the audience will meet a specialized trainer that will train them to become bacterias by using games and participatory activities.
“If I don’t play I won’t understand” is designed and directed by Monika Gravagno, the AD of Facciocose Physical Theatre company.
This will be a participatory physical theatre/workshop to explore communication and expression from a microbial perspective.
Followed by a panel discussion: How To Engage An Audience With ‘Difficult’ Science
After the workshop, stay for a panel discussion and Q&A with the makers and invited guests, to explore the outer limits of public engagement; the mutual benefits of PPI to artists and scientists in framing research questions, and creating new forms of work.
For Those Interested in Talking Science Supported by Drama
SPIRALLING & How Do We Begin The Conversation?
Fri, 4 June 2021, 14:00 – 15:00
In a time when views are drastically polarised, could questions potentially bring us together and not drive us further apart?
Screening of SPIRALLING by Jimena Larraguivel, followed by a panel discussion with Dr James Hatcher, Dr Melisa Canales, Professor Brendan Gilmore, Sue Lee: on PPI, clinical trials, and how do we begin the conversation on AMR?
“The idea behind this short film emerged in response to the overwhelming amount of information available on social media, which has undoubtedly had an impact in the way I navigate motherhood and take decisions in the best interest of my children. In a time where cancel culture seems to be the norm, it’s daunting asking questions. However, in a time where views are drastically polarised, aren’t questions what could potentially bring us together and not further apart?”
The doctors want to be sure that I’m not using. Fair play, I get it, course, I do. But I’ve been with heroin since I was 17. It’s up here.
Screening of INTO THE BREACH by David Milner, followed by a panel discussion with Dr Jane Freeman, Angela Mwape, Ruth Thomsen and Francis Yongblah on bugs, behaviour, their impact on on AMR, and what we really mean by ‘hard to reach patients’.
“Hostel dweller COLIN reflects on his past life and uncertain future while negotiating the reality of London’s streets. Colin’s in limbo, awaiting an operation; his body must be drug-free for surgery, but addiction has been the one constant in his life.”
How do we cope with the total disruption of infection? What’s the prognosis for the things we take for granted in our lives?
Screening of ME AND HER by Rebecca Simon, followed by a panel discussion with Professor Mark Fielder, Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green and Professor Nicola Williams, on the impact on, and of, human and animal behaviour in AMR, and the need to focus on One Health.
Home is where the heart is, where we feel most like ourselves. After almost seven months living in a ten by twelve foot hospital room with her sick daughter, Zoe escapes to home. To feel like herself again and that she still exists outside of that hospital room, outside of being a mum. But home doesn’t feel like home anymore, there’s been a shift, things are not as she would have them. She feels displaced and lost.
ME AND HER is a short film exploring the experiences of parents, carers and their families whose lives are profoundly altered by long term hospital stays. When suffering through a difficult and challenging time in their life, how do parents who are carers cope with the total disruption of their lives? What’s the prognosis for their careers, relationships and sense of identity?
The Piece That Started It All – NOSOCOMIAL & Collaboration within Public Engagement
Fri, 4 June 2021 – 20:00 – 21:00
Verbatim drama premiere. There is nothing weird or wonderful you can imagine in human experience I haven’t seen. I’m a Researcher in Humans
When I say I’m a healthcare scientist, they ask “do you work with animals?”When I tell them I work in a hospital, they say “are you a nurse?”There is nothing weird or wonderful you can imagine in human experience I haven’t seen. I’m a Researcher in Humans.
Screening of NOSOCOMIAL followed by panel discussion on Collaboration within Public Engagement with Dr Lena Ciric, Saskia Marland and Monika Gravagno.
Jo is not well. Something strange is happening. As a scientist, she can resolve this. Unless the world is infected. Unless it’s everywhere….
Kitty, Helena and Paul work through the night. An hour can make all the difference. Part thriller, part puzzle, the science of life and death.
Join us for the online premiere of our short film.
JO – Jimena Larraguivel
HELENA – Becky Simon
KITTY – Nicola Sanderson
PAUL – Peter Clements
Healthcare Scientists are 5% of the NHS workforce, responsible for 80% of diagnoses.
Forensic pathologists are a staple of TV crime drama and Healthcare Science has dominated news headlines during months of pandemic, yet the role of Healthcare Scientists themselves remains largely unknown. You don’t see us on Holby. Science is too ‘difficult’ without explanation. Yet working in basement labs,working with patients, working with families over years, the HCS experience is varied, vital, and their personal stories are remarkable.
Nosocomial began as a collaboration between playwright Nicola Baldwin and Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green, Lead Healthcare Scientist at Great Ormond Street Hospital. In summer 2018, over 30 Healthcare Scientists from various hospitals took time out of their schedules to join writing workshops, which later grew to involve artists and actors, to tell their stories.
Performed at Camden Peoples’ Theatre and site-specific events in NHS buildings, museums, and other public spaces. Winner of 2019 CSO Partnering Patients and Citizens award, and 2020 Antibiotic Guardian award for Public Engagement, this is the online premiere of our new short film, updated for 2021.
The Nosocomial project has been made possible thanks to SfAM and HIS public engagement grants.
Inspired by classic 1963 thriller by Val Guest (from book by Elleston Trevor) about scientists battling a smallpox outbreak
A Healthcare Scientist’s already-shaky marriage is tested to an even greater extent when he has to contend with a smallpox epidemic.
Inspired by the classic 1963 British black and white medical thriller adapted and directed by Val Guest (from the book Pillars Of Midnight by Elleston Trevor) about Healthcare Scientists battling a smallpox outbreak
For one night only, this live zoom script reading will pay homage to the iconic black and white movie experience.
Please dress appropriately, and return with us to a bygone era of Saturday night cinema-going, reimagined for the digital age, via the medium of Zoom in your own sitting room.
A unique experiment in co-creation involving a virtual company of actors, artists, scientists, researchers, and you, the audience.
It’s New Year’s eve. You get a call to go into the lab.
Microbial shapeshifter. Compulsive stealer of DNA. Who is she? Why does she do it? In a crisis of identity Klebsiella seeks psychotherapy…
Screening of KLEBSIELLA by Peter Clements, a new performance in development, followed by a panel discussion with costume designer Pam Tait and Healthcare Scientist Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green: on performance, playfulness and the need for novel approaches to engaging with AMR.
“A portrait of Klebsiella through a psychoanalytic session.
Klebsiella is the shapeshifter of the microbial world. A compulsive stealer of DNA. Who is she? Why does she do these things? In a crisis of identity , Klebsiella seeks psychotherapy to get to the bottom of what’s bugging her.
Klebsiella and Analyst meet to determine if Klebsiella is suitable for in depth psychoanalysis. Klebsiella resolves that she’s impossible to cure. She’s determined to find the love of her life, even if it means leaving a trail of destruction behind her.”
Comedy and Cabaret from the ‘best minds in science’…. A partnership with the popular Science Showoff comedy night hosted by Steve Cross.
Healthcare Scientists become comedians for one night only.
Tonight they’ll put aside their microscopes, computers, samples and equipment for one night to tell you jokes about their work.
The show will be hosted by comedy veteran Steve Cross, who has MCed hundreds of comedy shows of all kinds across the world, and who has trained these brave brainiacs to take to the stage. I say stage, they’ll be on a videolink from their own homes.
The gig will be made available to to ticket holders via a live stream from all of the performers’ houses. Ticket holders will be emailed details of the stream on the day of the show.
The show is on 5th of June and starts at 6pm prompt.
It’s just gone 6am on a Saturday morning and I need to get some writing done this weekend for a project that is overdue and has a final final deadline on Monday. It’s been a really long week and I don’t have much in the tank. To be honest, all I want to do is sit on the sofa with a pot of tea and spend the weekend watching Netflix with my hubby. I think we all have moments like this, and, to get me into the right head space, I’m starting my morning by writing this blog. I hope this might help some of you who are in the same place.
Know When Procrastination is Part of the Process and When You Are Just Wasting Time
When I was writing papers and my PhD thesis, I used to get really angry at myself for wasting time.I would spend the first three days wandering around and doing anything but putting words to paper. When I did sit down, I would just get words out. In general it takes me about two days to write a paper. I would then be even madder at myself for not getting to it earlier as I felt that I could achieve so much more if I just focussed.
Over the years I’ve discovered that the reason the words come easily when I sit down at a laptop is precisely because I’ve spent three days prevaricating. During that period of wandering around I’m thinking. Thinking about the story I want to tell with my results. Thinking about my top points. Finally, thinking about structure. It is all of this thinking, not all of it active, that enables me to hit the ground running when I come to actually write.
This isn’t to say that I’m not guilty of procrastination. There’s a reason this book chapter is late. I’m tired and finding it difficult to concentrate, which means that everything just makes my mind wander. It is really important to know yourself enough to know when you are in ‘preparation phase’ vs ‘procrastination’: one is useful to you and the other isn’t.
The Fear of a Blank Page
I find blank pages intimidating. I do. I know that I should see them as full of possibility and exciting, but I see them as a physical representation of how far I have to go. One of the first things I have to do, therefore, is get stuff onto that page in the least stressful way possible. How to do this depends on what the project is. For papers, I often just start by getting headers down. If I’m lucky enough to have some previous text on the subject I will copy and paste bits in as reminders. Usually I keep these highlighted so I know they are old text that needs re-working/replacing. If it’s something completely new, I will populate with lines from papers that I’m going to build reference structure around.
When I was writing my thesis, I wouldn’t even start chapter writing until I’d done a reading phase to help avoid the ‘blank page fear’. I would spend a week reading all the papers linked to the chapter I was about to write. During that reading phase, I would write the key points and linked references down in a Word document. I’d then shuffle them by topic. When I got to the week allocated for writing I would then have lots of text to import into my structure so I could avoid the blank page terror.
Structure is King
I’ve spent quite a lot of time writing different types of documents and I’ve discovered that there are only so many types of underlying structure, even though they often look different. Papers are a great example of this. One main advantage to them is that you can clearly see what that structure is, and you have access to all the information you need to help you.
When writing papers (and I’ve blogged about this before) you can look and see how many paragraphs that journal tends to have under discussion vs methods vs results. This helps you know where you need to focus the majority of your words. The same is true for grant applications: if you look at a section’s word count, it gives you a clue about what the readers will want to see. For less formal writing, I still tend to look at other pieces of content that have come out and decide if any of them fit what I want to write. It saves re-drafting and focusses the mind.
Structure will help you write. I will use bullet points under headers to show what my structure is, i.e. a bullet point per paragraph. If there are three paragraphs (such as tends to be used for an introduction) I will use them as follows:
Paragraph 1 – What’s the setting/problem?
Paragraph 2 – What are the knowns and what are the unknowns?
Paragraph 3 – What am I going to do? what’s the plan of action?
By planning my paragraph structure I try to avoid falling down too many rabbit holes and maintain the story of what I’m telling. I am then able to do the same with each of the paragraphs:
Line 1 – State what I’m going to tell you.
Line 2 – Tell you what I’m telling you with all the detail.
Line 3 – Reinforce my key point and link to the paragraph that will follow.
Doing this means that I’m not worrying about what comes next when I’m writing. I’m just hanging words off a structure that helps me as well as leading the reader.
Sometimes The Only Way Is Through
There are times that, no matter how much research I’ve done, no matter how prepped I am, I just can’t make the writing work. I’m lucky. it doesn’t happen to me very often but the pandemic has made it a more frequent event. Normally I hate working in silence. I’m not good at doing one thing at a time. I need music or TV when I work to actually help me focus. I know this may sound odd to many people. When I hit a particular wall, however, I’ve learnt that I have to shift from the way working normally works for me. In these circumstances I call upon my husband, Jon. I tell him what I need, i.e. I must work for 3 hours to break the back of this document. I tell him the night before and let him know the timeline. The next day he banishes me to the office, frequently supplying me with tea. On these occasions I work in silence and need enough dedicated time to get into ‘the zone’. Because I don’t want to do it, anything that can make me distracted, will make me distracted. I therefore retreat to a space where all the things that usually help me aren’t present. This shift allows me to trick my brain enough to make progress. Finding your Jon to push you when you can’t push yourself is super helpful.
The other thing I do is make deals with myself and – most importantly – stick to them ,i.e. I am allowed to go and bake that cake I want to if I’ve done three hours. I am not allowed to do it if I do less than that. There’s no letting me off for good behaviour. This is a Yoda moment ‘Do or do not, there is no try!’. Being honest with yourself is key: after all, there is a good chance you’ll know when you’re lying. Make the reward proportional to the effort, i.e. when I run a half marathon successfully I buy myself a nice dress, for 3 hours work I get a new pot of tea.
Know When to Walk Away
Some days, be aware that writing is just not going to happen. This can happen for a bunch of reasons: tiredness, illness, last minute invitations to a cocktail bar. It is only possible to enjoy the freedom of walking away if it’s a) not a project that has to happen or b) you’ve left yourself enough deadline time so that you can come back to it later. If either a or b are true then sometimes it is better to just not punish yourself and return to it later. That’s completely OK. You may need more thinking time; you may be having a super bad day. Lets not punish ourselves more than we already do. Embrace the fact that you have project-managed well enough to let it go for a bit. Also, be aware that you only have so many free passes before you are sitting here early on a Saturday morning and there are no more to take. Use them wisely!
Top Tips:
Let the frustration with yourself go as it doesn’t get you anywhere. Work out the source and find a way through or around.
If you do the research on structures beforehand you may find the writing process easier and more efficient.
Know when you have time to defer and when you need to push through. Make an active choice rather than defaulting to the last minute.
All opinions on this blog are my own
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Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
I’ve just come off a Sunday morning Zoom call for Rise of the Resistance, a digital festival I’m involved in that will be happening on the 4th and 5th June 2021 about Antimicrobial Resistance. It’s been a long week and this blog is late because I’m super tired, but what struck me when I came off the call is that whilst on it (and for a while after) I’ve actually felt energised and enthusiastic. That’s not to say I don’t love my work and I never feel like this about my job. I do. But I’ve noticed that, after a year plus of the pandemic, I don’t feel it as much as I used to. This made me reflect on why that is, and what feeds my energy and enthusiasm and where I feel drained.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Myers-Briggs but I do think that it can be a useful start in terms of reflecting what energises and what drains you. I flip between ENFP and ENFJ, depending on the test and how stressed out I am. Where I never vary is on the feeling dynamic: I need to feel connected to people in order to feel inspired, creative and like ‘me’.
One of the issues I’ve experienced during the pandemic is the ‘feeling connected’ part. I get this through being creative, working collaboratively with others and spending time with people who enable me to feel secure and support free thinking. I find routine to be draining. It seems weird to describe the pandemic as routine, but in many ways it’s been the worst combination for me. There’s been no time, thinking space, or resources for true creativity and innovation. Whilst at the same time everything has been constantly changing and so most of my available intellectual and physical resource has been focussed on administration and reacting to change, rather than driving it.
True change and innovation require time for self reflection and the establishing of partnerships. This has definitely been something that has been resource-limited.
If you use DISC profiling I’m about as strongly DI as it’s possible to be, with an additional focus on collaboration. A lot of my team are much more C (see below) and so react to the challenges faced by this change in working structure very differently to me. For them, they haven’t enjoyed the ever-changing guidance but for a different reason, as they prefer routine and structure. Interestingly, no matter who you are, this way of working has probably been draining for us all, rather than energising us.
It feels to me that all of us are therefore coming out of the last 12 months plus in a drained rather than energised state, both as individuals and as teams. If we are able to continue for the next 12 months, we probably need to take some time that we don’t have to reflect on what our working lives are like right now and how we can change them to build in some of the activities that energise rather than drain us. For me I’ve found things like Myers-Briggs and DISC a useful starting point. But they are just that: a starting point.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about where my passion lies over the last 12 months. I have the best job in the world but there’s no getting away from the fact that it has been hard and frequently draining lately. Not just that, but it is likely to continue to be so for some time. I’m incredibly lucky to have projects like Nosocomial and to be involved in teaching, which enables me to visualise and see impact and change, as well as to build connections and networks that are super important to me. A lot of these projects have been on hold for some time, but – as the things that energise rather than drain – now is the time to dust these off and make the deliberate choice to re-engage.
My thoughts on what energises me:
One to one or small group chats in non-hierarchical settings (like tea and cake catch ups) where connections are developed/sustained.
Making plans for the future.
Having time to throw around ideas and discuss concepts.
Time spent with people where I don’t fear judgement.
Creation – whether a project or idea.
Passion projects about communicating science.
Teaching/educational activities where you can engage and see the impact on those involved.
Time and resources are no less limited now than last year.But, if we are going to survive to the end of this marathon,now is the time to invest in what makes us better at all we do. So for yourselves and your teams, find what it is that energises you and support each other in making the room to make it happen.
(Apologies. This is a long one. Turned out I had quite a lot to say!)
This post has been languishing in my list of drafts for ages. After a difficult week, though, it felt like the right time to actually take it out of the ‘to do’ pile and finally finish it. The main driver for this is seeing how excited people are for June. The plans being made. The jubilance seen on social media. Weirdly combined with seeing yet more protests about the inhumanity of what has been done to society by lockdowns and mask-wearing requirement. All the time getting updates from India, Peru, Brazil about the realities of a virus that is out of control and still killing people globally.
I have previously posted about the dangers of looking at the situation and some of these responses from my position of privilege (Science Communication: Reflections from an Ivory Tower | girlymicro (girlymicrobiologist.com). I do, therefore, acknowledge that this is a complex topic and that people will write PhD thesis on the confluence of science, human behaviour and policy. I’m not that smart and so this post is just my personal tale of being an Infection Prevention and Control scientist surviving in the midst of a global pandemic, and why some healthcare workers may not be keen to re-engage with life as normal.
On the 31st January 2020 I posted on my personal Facebook about the fact that I thought the spread of SARS CoV2 was going to cause real issues along with some commentary and guidance. Some of what happened over the last 14 months I could have predicted. So much of the non-science and emotional/relationship impacts I could never have seen coming.
What Is This Work Life Balance You Speak Of?
I work in IPC because I enjoy the responsiveness of it. I love a challenge as I discussed in a previous post. The difference with this vs normal infection control is that it hasn’t been high adrenaline and intense for three days, or three weeks. This has been life for over a year. No matter how much you love your job, no matter how much you know the difference it makes, that brings with it a weight and a burden that no amount of resilience or wellness seminars are going to dissipate.
I’ve been thinking about a metaphor for it for a while and this is what I’ve landed on. I love a blanket. I always have one to snuggle under when on the sofa. On cold days, or when I’m feeling particularly challenged, I may even layer up with two, for that extra level of comfort. There are some parallels with the parts of my job I find comfortable, such as how I feel about responding to the crisis management part of IPC. It’s what keeps the job interesting and never dull. Right now, though, I feel like I’m lying on my sofa and the blankets just keep on being added. At first I moved from comfortable and snuggled to overly warm and uncomfortable. Now, with the constant piling of new ones, I feel like I’ve moved to suffocating and trapped. At some point you wonder how many can be added before you’ll never be able to escape from under the pile.
I think one of the reasons for this is not just the work but that, suddenly, life outside of work is now also work. Every conversation you have is about SARS CoV2. Conversations with friends, Facebook posts, taxi rides. When you have a bad day at work normally, at some point, you can walk away from it. There’s been no walking away from this: it’s everywhere and so there’s no space in which to recover.
The Clear and Present Danger
One of the other layers to this is the fear. It’s not something I dwell upon. It’s something I try to actively not think about, but there’s no denying it’s been an ever present feature of the last year. I posted about the fact that my sister passed away some years ago, so my parents and family have already been faced with losing someone. This is something that families don’t get over. What I haven’t posted about is that viruses and I have a rather turbulent past. I’ve been ventilated when I was younger due to acute respiratory distress brought on by viral infections. Viral infections also exacerbate my angio oedema, which makes my face and hands swell and impacts on my ability to eat and sleep. There has been understandable concern from friends and family about me needing to travel on public transport and attend work, whereas they would have loved for me to be able to stay home and build walls of protection around myself. Seeing that anxiety has not been easy. It has also not been easy ignoring that nagging fear at the back of my own mind. The ‘what happens if’. I’ve had to put faith in my ability to be super-compliant and in the guidelines I was issuing to keep both myself and others safe. This is always the case, but there’s no doubt that this has been a high consequences event if I got it wrong. Normally, when you are managing an outbreak, you are not also part of the outbreak.
This has been brought home by the deaths of colleagues and family. My family, like many others, have lost people as has my Trust. So you don’t have to hypothesise about how others are feeling. I’m feeling it too. The grief, the loss, the fear. There’s no walking away. The only thing you can do is acknowledge it, then straighten your shoulders and, as they say, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.
Everyone’s an Expert
One of the things I’ve found personally frustrating, no matter how understandable, is that everyone is now an expert. They appear to all have an in depth understanding of diagnostics, of virology, of infection control and of public health policy. I completely understand the drivers for this: it helps people feel in control, but even so it’s still super frustrating. The worst ones for me are the people who are definitely on the Top of Mount Stupid in terms of levels of knowledge. There was a lot of social media commentary on every action taken. Especially by people who others look to as being informed due to them having good levels of general knowledge. People who others will then take advice from without fact-checking or understanding that this is a complex situation with a lot of moving parts. As much as these people are often certain they are correct, it is also a certainty that they definitely don’t have access to all the facts, as even working within the system I couldn’t claim to have access to everything. At the start, I spent a lot of time trying to counter this misinformation but, as time goes on, I must admit I’ve struggled to have the energy. I think this has not helped in getting scientific messages out there and good communication, as many people involved are also maxed out on other actions. This guilt adds another blanket to my pile.
Real Science vs Movie Science
Although people normally smile and ask polite questions about what it is I do, I’ve never felt it has been in any way mainstream. It has been fascinating to me seeing decisions and things I’m doing in real time playing out in the media a day or two later. Early on, guidance and diagnostics were changing every few days or weeks. The speed at which everyone needed to flex and respond to changing demands and new information is something I have never experienced before. For me, on the ground, this was an amazing feat. But the criticism of speed and response does make me think of scenes from Star Trek, where you can get more just by saying how urgent it is: the implication being that we just aren’t working hard enough. The same can be said of individual sample requests. Sometimes when you get a call and someone explains how urgent a result is and the only response you can give is that the process is limited in speed by the underlying chemistry, it therefore cannot go faster no matter how much I want it to. There are certainly speed savings in workflow but these require workflows not to be changing every other day for you to truly understand where speed can be gained without impacting quality.
Reality Strikes and It’s Not Pretty
This all brings me to the thing that I have found most difficult. Seeing the response to the science. Not only in terms of protests in the streets from people who believe that the virus that has killed their family and colleagues doesn’t exist, but seeing the non-compliance with measures to save lives. The living reality of seeing how ‘the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few’ plays out in the behaviour of both strangers and friends. The reality is that the scientific conspiracy theories have been present everywhere. What would, in other scenarios, have been chats that caused me to roll my eyes about data manipulation, vaccine hesitancy, and refusal to take personal actions lead to a different level of impact when it is all you are living and breathing. It’s not discussing hypotheticals when you are exhausted and dealing with sick people every day and experiencing personal loss.
I’ve found this super hard when these conversations and behaviours are displayed by not just strangers on the internet but by friends and family who you would otherwise have thought of as being part of your ‘tribe’. Part of the discomfort in this is that you are constantly faced with the failure to get sound information out there, and of your personal lack of energy to engage. I’ve also, on occasion, been attacked for being the bearer of bad news when trying to expectation manage on my personal social media. It means that, as of right now, I feel I will come out of this with some permanently altered relationships as it’s just not that easy to forget and move on. This will be a personal legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic that I will be dealing with for some time.
So Why Am I Telling You This?
A good friend, when I was talking some of these thoughts through, suggested I share some of this. Not just to talk it through, although that has been useful, but also to explain why I’m not excited about the so called ‘return to normal’.
Everyone’s journey and experiences over the last year have been different. Mine, like many people, has been one of exhaustion and stress, but not for the same reasons. A lot of stress discussed with me by others has come from feeling isolated and scared about personal well-being. Due to that some people, now they are vaccinated, are feeling less at risk. They are also understandably energised by the thought of seeing friends and family.
I on the other hand am in a much worse physical place than I was pre-pandemic as the stress has exacerbated everything somewhat. I’m also really tired and feel like I’ve been running non-stop for over a year. All I want now is to hide away and recover, see no one, and sleep until I am more like me again.
So please understand, if you invite me to things post-lockdown end, or if you phone and I don’t answer, it’s not because I don’t value our connection. It’s because I value it enough to want to engage again when I can be fully present. Until then forgive me for retreating back to my sofa and trying to get back to having one blanket that brings me comfort, rather than 150 which make it hard to breath. See you in 2022.
I know I normally post about science and science adjacent topics, but in the interest of practicing what I preach and bringing my full authentic self, I wanted to post about a topic that I don’t think gets discussed. This is partly prompted by the time of year, but also by quite a few posts I’ve seen this week on twitter from people who have felt alone in similar scenarios. I also wanted to to give a view of how this feels 11 years on to those who are going through this now, to let them know that you will find a new normal. It will never be the same, it can’t be. It doesn’t however devalue what your life is worth, you will find a new way, one that is uniquely your own. This is all from my perspective: if your journey has been different I am in no way devaluing your experience, just sharing my own. Feel free to not read this post if you don’t want to hear me overshare.
So now the disclaimers are done, a little history which you may or may not wish to skip if you want to miss the details.
I’m 41 and 11 years ago, this weekend, my sister Claire died. She died when she was 5 1/2 months pregnant with my niece Morgan. Her pregnancy was normal, although there were concerns on the ultrasound from the start in terms of whether Morgan had an underlying condition that would mean the course of the pregnancy might not be successful. We were all super excited when she reached five months, as that had been the milestone beyond which we all thought a positive outcome more likely. Two weeks later my sister had a headache on a Friday night. I was away at a hen do for my best friend. She phoned my mum when she started vomiting. She called 111, who told her that it was likely to be a stomach bug and to remain hydrated. At 3 that morning she awoke partially paralysed. An ambulance was called. She seized on the way to the hospital and was brain dead when she arrived. This was confirmed 48 hours later when we turned off her ventilator and donated her organs. Morgan survived 24 hours and then also died. She was two weeks too early to be considered legally a person and for a C-section to be attempted. I got a call asking me to get from Leeds to the hospital in Cambridge at 7am, whilst horribly hungover, and in the way of these things the information handed over didn’t really cover the clinical picture. When I arrived and saw her chart (she was in surgery to see if anything could be done) I knew it was over. I was 30 and she was 32. She died of early onset pre-eclampsia and I was told they couldn’t rule out a genetic component and that I should consider not having children as we had a family history of difficult pregnancies. I’d been married 6 months.
So, I’m newly married. Children were the next thing on the cards. I was so so excited that I was going to be an auntie. In fact the first issue of the gift subscription to Mother and Baby magazine arrived at Claire’s the day she died and was there to greet me as I picked out her outfit to lay her out in. Suddenly, everywhere I go I’m faced with the question that every newly married woman gets…. are you having a baby? I get it from cab drivers, colleagues at work who don’t know what’s going on, from reps and other people who you see infrequently, and strangers who’ve you’ve never even met before. It’s a knife that gets stuck in your heart. Even now, all these years later, I dread these questions. “How many kids do you have?” None. Then the look as people decide where to go next: do they go for the super intrusive question or the platitude about the fact that you’ll enjoy them when you have them. It’s not like I don’t get it and, on a 1:1 basis, you shrug it off rather than scream back, because it’s not the individuals fault. It’s the fault of a society that bases my value on the Darwinian concept of my reproductive legacy. No one asks my husband these questions, at least not with the regularity with which I am. Certainly not strangers or cab drivers who notice his wedding ring. (NB when he read this he pointed out he does get asked, not so frequently, but it does happen).
I started my NIHR Doctoral Fellowship 4 weeks after my sisters death and, to be honest, I threw myself into it in order to see something concrete come out of the period. My sister had been planning on starting a PhD after she came back to work from maternity leave and I felt very much I was doing it for both of us. As people don’t talk about this stuff it was a hard time. There was no one who had been through a similar thing. Talking about not being able to have children makes people so uncomfortable as no one really knows what to say. My friends and I had all just got married and non of us had had kids, so I was the first one to face the issue. Although, now, I have a number of friends who for different reasons are in the same boat. In many ways, I wish the medical guidance had been ‘you can’t have children’. I found that you could try and have a termination as soon as there’s any rise in blood pressure or change in markers detected tortuous. The idea of walking into a hospital every week wondering if that was the week I’d have to abort was more than I could face. Even now it makes me feel sick. My husband and I agreed to keep talking about it. We have a wonderful and fulfilling life together. Although it is my body, for me it very much needed to be our decision. He has been a godsend throughout and always said that I was the most important thing in his world. He wasn’t prepared to risk me. Nevertheless, having the ‘will we won’t we’ decision hanging over our heads was an indescribable weight. Especially when our friends went on to get pregnant and raise wonderful children.
Close friends were great about the pregnancy piece. I had some friends who were too scared to speak about it too much as they knew how much it hurt. I had other people in my world who just threw baby pictures in my face without even thinking about it. The best ones knew how incredibly happy I was for them, even if some days I couldn’t face the detail. These friends checked in with whether I wanted to see that picture or hear that story so depending on how resilient I was feeling so I could still be part of their story. These ones would also message Jon before they phoned to tell me their great news so that I could have a glass of something treaty and get myself into the right headspace. I know it’s so tricky for people that I both want to be there and can’t fully always engage and, therefore, the rules change day by day. My plea is: if you aren’t in this particular boat, that you ask the question about whether I’d like to see/know/hold and not just assume consent. As time goes by, you’d probably never know that when you share without asking it hurts me. But it still does some days none the less.
So here we are 11 years on. One day, a couple of years ago, my husband and I spontaneously turned to each, with no preparation and said almost simultaneously ‘that ship has sailed’. We cried and, in all honestly, we drank champagne to celebrate. It was only in that moment that I realised the weight of ‘do i risk my life for this?’ and ‘am I a bad person for not wanting it at whatever the cost?’ and ‘am I letting my husband down by not just trying?’ I realised that he had been carrying exactly the same weight. It took a long long time to get here. I’d be lying if I said that there were not still some days, like the ones coming over the weekend, where it isn’t hard. Partly it’s hard because I can’t separate the grief for the children I never had from the grief over the sister I did.
I’m doing pretty great these days. We are the adopted aunt and uncle of a few of our friends children and we delight in spoiling them. On the 18th of August every year which was Morgan’,s due to date we send ‘Morgans gifts’ to children in our social circle in her honour and remembrance. Just because we can’t spoil her doesn’t mean we can’t spoil others in her name.
Here are some thoughts that might help if you are on the outside looking in (these are not all issues I feel in my setting but they are ones over the last 11 years I’ve come across):
Please understand that my life has meaning even if I don’t have kids. Please, therefore, don’t devalue my plans and life by always expecting me to be the one to work late/cover the weekend because everyone else has children. You don’t mean the way it comes across or the way it sometimes makes me feel. I know that. I also know you need to be there for your family, and that’s completely right, but I have family too.
Please consider altering slightly those questions you ask strangers who have life paths they may not be willing to share.
Take a couple of seconds to think about consent before you give me your baby to hold. Neither of us want me to flinch and drop your precious parcel and sometimes my physical reaction is to back away before my brain kicks in.
If you have a friend on IVF, please don’t ask if they are pregnant yet (this also goes for PhD students and their thesis being finished).
For the people who are still experiencing the panic attacks, the society doesn’t value my life depression, the what will my legacy be thought cycle. Know this. Your value does not depend on whether you can produce a child. Your value does not depend on what reproductive legacy you leave. Your value lies in who you are and whether you can have a child is nothing to do with it. Know also that it will get better. That the knives in the heart of well-meaning questions start to hurt a little less. You will find a new normal, you will form a new version of you of which this is a part, but not the dominant self-defining part. Know, also, that if you ever want to talk it through over tea and cake I am here for you.
It’s Easter Monday and tomorrow I get to start a post which in many ways I had never thought would become a reality.. I get to start as a Consultant Clinical Scientist in Infection Prevention and Control! For 16 years I’ve been training towards this. John, my Consultant, and I have been actively aiming for this moment since I started my NIHR Doctoral Fellowship in 2010, but there have been a lot of bumps along the way. The past two years I had really begun to question if it would ever happen.
I am over the moon but I wanted to mark the occasion by acknowledging some of the barriers that have existed, so others know they are not alone in facing them. I also want to talk about some of my hopes and fears in starting such a big phase of my career.
Acknowledging the Barriers
I started my training in October 2004. when I started I was told I was on an 11 year journey to consultant practice. As it transpired, it really wasn’t that straightforward. Although there are now great training schemes for post registration Clinical Scientists to take them through FRCPath and a PhD, they didn’t exist at the time. I am grateful and fortunate to have been able to become an NIHR Doctoral Fellow, which gave me the time and money to undertake both a PhD and achieve FRCPath by examination over 5 years. In the end I was able to get around the barriers by taking a novel route that enabled me to gain equivalent qualifications to those on the current structured schemes. Speaking of equivalence, getting this novel route acknowledged was also not possible for a number of years after I passed my exams in 2015/2016. Last year, however, I was able to get these formally acknowledged due to the existence of the Academy of Healthcare Science equivalence route, so now I sit on the same register as those now qualifying through the National School of Healthcare Science route.
For me the biggest barrier is that I always wanted to be a Consultant Clinical Scientist in Infection Prevention and Control, as this was the field I had specialised in since 2007. Over the last few years, however, I had begun to doubt that this would be possible. I am qualified to apply for Consultant roles in Medical Microbiology and although these used to be rare they are becoming much more common place. These roles are great but they didn’t represent the dream job that I had been working towards. As these roles don’t really exist, and certainly didn’t exist in my current organisation, I agonised whether I should go for the standard route or continue to fight for a dream that may or may not ever happen. Needless to say, I fought. This is nothing new as, when I started in IPC, I was the only person I knew fulfilling that role and change doesn’t happen unless someone creates that new pathway. It has not been easy but, boy, is it worth it now the moment is here! So for all of you doubting (like I did!), continue to fight the good fight, follow your dreams: the pay off will be even better than you think!
Lets Start with the Fears
As I’ve covered above, this is my dream job and I’m so excited about it. Like many scientists, however, I have a tendency towards perfectionism and, as it means so much to me, I really don’t want to mess it up. I am embarking on something new and part of the fear is that I don’t know how much of it is new and how much change there will be. As with all things new there’s is always some level of adjustment required.
My new job description actually consists of bits that I mostly already do, although there will be expansion into new areas like surgical site infections. It will require me to develop new networks and new relationships, to build up credibility and to become comfortable with being the final point of clinical escalation.
This means I will inevitably make mistakes, both in terms of individual acts but also in relationships as I get to know people in a new context. I have a tendency to enter a shame loop even with very minor errors, which leads to fear in terms of making errors and impacts on my stress levels. I want myself and the team to understand that we will support each other through those mistakes and make deliberate, thoughtful choices in relation to the below to support reflection, learning and moving forward.
There is also a tendency when we step up to a new role to worry about what others think of us and whether we are capable of performing. This can drive me to over-question myself and to obsess about details. Working in healthcare, I think it’s key to not let this get in the way of constantly questioning ‘why?’ To be flexible in our thinking and learning from every interaction. I can’t go into this new post thinking I know it all, as much as I want to arrive at work tomorrow in a super-hero outfit fully formed, the reality is there will be a period of transition. I am going to need to grow into this and, therefore, I need to enter the role with a growth mindset:
So What are My Hopes?
My hope has and will always be the same: to make a difference. It doesn’t have to revolutionise mankind but I want to make a difference, one moment, one interaction at a time. That could be making someone smile, it could be getting that result out faster, it could be changing national guidance to make patients safer. I am fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to make that difference. To have a job that means that my passion for change and my profession aligns with the post I have been offered. I don’t want to waste that opportunity, not for one single minute!
On a professional basis I want to continue to ensure that progress is made by improving patient pathways linked to bringing evidence based practice on line, and advancing what we do with the research I undertake in my academic world. I also want to continue to raise the profile of what Healthcare Scientists can bring. I am a passionate believer in how much my profession can benefit healthcare and Infection Prevention and Control/Microbiology in particular. Healthcare systems are changing, becoming more complex The impact of science is greater than ever before. I intend to continue to advocate and shout about the benefits of HCS, so those coming behind me won’t have to fight the same fights that I have fought. They will get to fight different ones for the ones that follow them!
Finally, I want to continue to learn. I want to rise to the challenge and not be stopped by fear. I want to remain brave and unafraid to ask the stupid questions. To take onboard the wealth of knowledge and experience that others have and to become better because of it.
So, yes it has been a long road, but every step has been worth it. I’ve learned so much by encountering barriers and I’m stronger in my commitment to the role because of it. Whatever journey you are on I hope that the same can be said by you when you reach the finishing line.
The set up is this. I was asked by Agata at Life Drawing+ if I would be interested in posing for her life drawing class where they were drawing images of key workers. She was after a virologist but I thought I might do 🙂 (she was given my name by an SfAM committee member – the importance of networks!) I had to decide on a pose and a song that summed up the pandemic, and then login to a Zoom call where we would chat and the artists (of all abilities) who were in the class would have 15 minutes to sketch.
I’ts now 7:30 Sunday night and I need to log into the zoom. I’ve been working all weekend trying to answer enough emails in order to keep my head above water. So why in the words of my sage and constantly supportive husband are we setting up lights and computers when I’m too tired to eat in order to pose for a life drawing class?
Why do I continue to say yes when I could say no?
Now don’t get me wrong. When I’m feeling as tired as I am, I often also ask myself that question and so I want to take you through some of the reasons that I continue to say yes.
If the Past Few Years Have Shown Me Anything, It’s That I’ve Only Got One Shot
Some of you may know that in my family this generation we’ve had a number of us not make it to 40. If anything, the pandemic has crystallised for me that we never know what’s around the corner and no matter how much we plan the next steps, fundamentally a lot of things are outside of our control.
For me, this means that I want to be able to seize new experiences and the learning they bring, rather than assume that there will always be another opportunity around the corner.
A one off event where I said yes to a public engagement event led to me meeting Nicola Baldwin and gave birth to a partnership that is now in its third year, has won national awards, and involved thousands of patients and members of the public. Building networks is done one interaction at a time So without saying yes you will miss out on further opportunities you didn’t even imagine were possible.
I appreciate this sounds like FOMO (fear of missing out) and if you take it too far it could break you, and that’s not what I’m encouraging. Its about really evaluating each opportunity offered to you and reflecting on the uniqueness of the opportunity, the possible outcomes and the reasons for saying yes or no.
I Want to Do Things that Scare Me
This leads me onto item no.2. I want to do things that scare me. Not ‘horror movie’scares me, but stepping out of my comfort zone. I really do believe that the best learning occurs when we are comfortable, when we are in the zone just outside of comfortable, where we are pushing ourselves. I’m naturally a pretty lazy person. If I could live my life as a Jane Austin character, drinking tea and reading books all day, I would. I’m super aware of this so, I make active choices to try and push myself.
Although I’m mostly hoping to have finalised the period of formal education in life, I really do want to still develop as an individual and each time I do something new and challenging I learn a little bit more about myself, be that stand-up comedy or modelling for a life drawing. If I hadn’t taken part last week, I wouldn’t have reflected on the question why and I wouldn’t therefore be writing this blog.
I Want to Raise the Profile of My Profession
One of my constant reasons for saying yes is that I work in one of the best professions in the world, and no one seems to know that it exists! I am very aware that if we do not get out of our bubbles and talk to people then everyone will continue to believe that the NHS consists solely of doctors and nurses. We won’t inspire the wonderful future workforce to become Healthcare Scientists rather than taking the more traditional route of entering medicine. After all, you can’t be what you can’t see.
For me, one of the things that I get asked about most is swabbing, how to do it, what it means. It’s one of the things I’ve done most of, both myself and being part of strategic planning. So when it came to deciding on a pose I went with using lateral flow equipment and (the top half) of my scrubs.
I made a very deliberate decision not to pose in a white coat with a pipette as I wanted to encourage conversations that show that so many Healthcare Scientists don’t work in a laboratory and to talk about the amazing work my colleagues have done during the pandemic. We spoke about ventilator technicians and biomedical engineers, cardiac physiologists and lung function. As well as pathology and the importance of diagnostic stewardship.
I Want to Talk About Science with People Who I May Never Encounter Normally
You may have a really wide social circle normally, but no matter how wide our circles we still tend to be limited in the people we interact with. Most of my friends work in IT, law, finance, medicine or science. I have a few writer friends but my artistic creative circle is most limited to the lovely creatives I’ve met through working with Nicola Baldwin on projects like Nosocomial. Right now it doesn’t even really matter how wide your social circle normally is, if you’re like me it’s currently focussed on a few really key people in your life. Lockdown and exhaustion from work make it hard to have the energy to be truly social. I think we have to understand therefore that our understanding of the world and of the challenges are coloured by those interactions. Something really brought home to me by recent elections and the way that COVID-19 conspiracy theories spread. If we really want to have an impact and understand the barriers to undertaking science, and how science is perceived, we need to have conversations outside of our echo chambers. We need to engage in true dialogue that will often challenge us and sometimes scare us.
It is both invigorating and eye opening to see your profession through the lens of people that do not necessary have access to scientists. It makes you realise that some of the things you take for granted, for me children ending up in ITU due to SARS CoV2, is not something that is necessarily in the general circulating knowledge.The perception that children don’t get SARS CoV2 is strongly pushed both in the media and political statements, even if what they actually say is more nuanced. Being open and willing to truly discuss, answer questions and embark in creative thinking about topics both normalises science, and also benefits me by supporting me to see challenges in a new light.
Finally, look at all the amazing one of a kind mementoes I got out of it: items I would never have otherwise. So next time you get offered that unique opportunity remember to think yes, rather than automatically saying no.
Last week I had a rather momentous interview. It felt and was rather high stakes. On the morning whilst I was waiting for it to occur I asked twitter for their advice on interview practice. The aim being to collate a list to help others preparing for similar high stakes situations. Below are the wonderful words of advice that twitter provide, I have cluster them into topics but the words are their own.
Comments About General Preparation
Ware your comfy smart shoes! Don’t go fancy because they look nice, comfort is more important in stressful situations (speaking from experience – https://twitter.com/bethanyrosemoss
Make sure you know what job you are being interviewed for. I have had candidates turn up without no idea what the post involved. Clearly hadn’t even read the job description. – https://twitter.com/ESHT_Pathology
Be confident. If you find this hard to do then reach out to someone you trust & prepare. Practice your elevator pitch & prep answers to situational judgement tests. Helps you think fast. Also, have an “external” mindset for internal jobs! – https://twitter.com/PhillipaBurns
Try to know your panel in advance; ask who is on it, make an educated guess based on dpt.. then know what interests them. Can help think of topics they might ask on or nuggets to drop into your answers that make them feel you are like minded- helps build rapport. – https://twitter.com/KatyHeaney
Always make contact before applying. Ring up, speak to them, ask questions about the role&department. So important. No doubt this gives you a foot in the door for interviews. Shows you are keen, interested& knowing a panel member in advance can really lesson nerves. – https://twitter.com/KatyHeaney
Sit down and actually talk through your answers from start to finish. It’s easy to know what your main points are but you may not have practiced phrasing it coherently. Maybe record it and play it back if you don’t have someone to practice it on – https://twitter.com/purcelle12
Read the job description carefully, everybody being interviewed has the essentials and deserves the opportunity. Concentrate on the desirables and make yourself stand out in these areas. – https://twitter.com/MCRImaging
I was once told this: interviewers only ever ask 3 Qs: 1- can you do the job? 2- Will you do the job? 3 – will you fit in? They’re asked in many different and creative ways – but that’s what they boil down too. So prepare for those 3 Qs and you’re good to go! – https://twitter.com/nat_echo
Make sure you have an example of how you meet each of the essential requirements on the person spec. Research the lab/trust- see if they have any big projects pending- how could you contribute?? – https://twitter.com/Samjjw
Know what you want to put across, says 3 or 4 things and practise different ways of saying, for instance, a)I am competent, b)I have practical skills, c)I am good at understanding how to apply procedures, so whatever the question you should still be able to answer it. 1/2 – https://twitter.com/SueLeeLondon
Always have an example of something you’re not very good at/confident with, and a plan of how you’re going to get better/feel more confident about it. Alongside all the things you’re good at, of course. – https://twitter.com/JesstheBMS
If going for a technical job, be prepared for a test even if they don’t tell you in advance. Also don’t worry about questioning the test answers certainly in software there is more than one way to skin a cat as long as you can justify it it’ll be fine. – https://twitter.com/curdnick
Before any interview, think about the three key points you want to communicate and, if you can, distill them down to three key words (eg. experienced, enthusiastic, friendly). Then, no matter what question you’re asked, you’ll know the sort of answer you want to give. 1/3 – https://twitter.com/readthewriter
Pre prepare some specific examples to common questions so you are ready (trouble shooting, team work, communication to non-micro people). Always give an example where possible. Emphasise the skills you utilised and what you learned with each example. – https://twitter.com/ClinSciGeek
Don’t always expect technical questions. When asked what their interests are outside work. It sometimes really throws people! – https://twitter.com/duckydoos
Values & behaviours of the trust and the nhs. This seems to have replaced hcpc standards type questions, but good professional behaviours. Know the words, but be able to give examples. If it’s a management role – research compassionate management, and how you can deliver this. – https://twitter.com/PhillipaBurns
Don’t forget the values questions! Look up the trust/ department values and think of an example for each – https://twitter.com/MT_marshlands
I know a dept that asks “how will you react if you don’t get this job” when it is a hotly contested internal job. And I love it! It’s your chance to talk your professionalism & values up – but also a contract with your team. You need to be gracious, even when disappointed. – https://twitter.com/PhillipaBurns
Things to be Aware of Once You Get into the Room
Show, don’t tell. Anyone can say they’re friendly, or committed to continuing education, or they’re innovative, or, or, or… So concentrate instead on *showing* those things. That might just be through your demeanour, but it could also be through project examples. – https://twitter.com/readthewriter
This may sound mad, if asked for a drink always ask for water. I once had a Tea made of full-fat milk instead of semi-skimmed and couldn’t drink it and mouth was very dry towards the end of the interview – https://twitter.com/curdnick
Lastly, your main aim is build a rapport with interviewer/s if you haven’t lied on your CV (don’t do that) all the other candidates are likely equally qualified and the point of difference will be if they think you’ll fit in the culture of the company. – https://twitter.com/curdnick
Remember that, in any job interview, you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. They want you to be a fit, to solve the problem they have of needing someone. But, equally, you can decide if they are a good fit for you; if they solve something for you. – https://twitter.com/readthewriter
Pause before answering, look like you are thinking about your answer, or it looks like you are rushing to get your side in. Or say a start phrase like ” That’s a good question” to show you are thinking. Pause during your answer, don’t let the headlong rush of words trip you up. – https://twitter.com/Pwareingfsltd
Always say why you want THIS job THIS role in THIS hospital etc make sure they know you have done your homework into the post – https://twitter.com/liz7262
Thoughts on How To Structure Your Answers
What was the Situation Task Action Result (STAR). This is the best advice anyone ever gave me. Interview questions are so much easier to answer with this structure. – https://twitter.com/LLaurajwalsh
If you start your answer with the most relevant points, the interviewer can always ask for further details if they want them. – https://twitter.com/MicroTanner
What Kind of Content in My Answers Will They Be Looking For?
Don’t forget to explain outcomes! It’s great you arranged an event for 1000 people but what was the outcome of this? – https://twitter.com/Sci_Game_Girl
On top this I have more than once been asked to give a detailed explanation of a role I played on a project. If you can mix this with the kind of job you’ll be doing for them. For my current job a project I had done 7 years prior helped far more than I had most recently worked on – https://twitter.com/curdnick
Show transferable skills by knowing how to answer behavioural questions appropriately and don’t be afraid to give examples of when things didn’t work because it’s how you can demonstrate what you learnt and how you will implement change in the future that matters – https://twitter.com/theartofhearing
Keep answers to the point. We’ve ended up marking people down who give the “right” answer, but bundle it in with so much irrelevant stuff we’re left wondering if they really do understand or are just saying everything they can think of, hoping that some of it is what’s wanted. – https://twitter.com/MicroTanner
Reflections on What Questions You Might Ask
If u don’t think well on the hoof. Go prepared with question to ask; makes you look interested in the role and keen, and you can use it to bring up something u have done well somewhere else – can use it to your advantage. – https://twitter.com/KatyHeaney
They should also be selling the job to you. If they are interviewing you your CV implies you have the requirements. Ask questions about culture etc. Never tell the interviewer you think they are lying. – https://twitter.com/SueLeeLondon
I’ve been asked by a candidate “why did the previous post holder leave?” Which is an excellent question. – https://twitter.com/ClinSciGeek
Finally one from me. I’ve posted the below TED talk link before. I know that it may sound bonkers but I do find the Power Posing useful, if nothing else than for 2 minutes I take a few minutes to calmly centre myself before the high stakes episode. I was too nervous to selfie but there was definitely a ‘Pride’ pose that was held in the moment prior to my interview.
I was fortunate enough to get the post. I hope the collective wisdom of twitter will support you in getting your dream opportunity also. Huge thank you to all the wonderful contributors who have share their experience for the benefit of others.
All opinions on this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
I talk a lot in this blog about raising each other up and bringing your whole self to being a scientist. There is one woman who taught me that from a very young age. Let me introduce you to my mum Sandra.
My mum is from a generation where her options were limited by her gender. She was forced to leave school in order to work to support her family until the point at which she go married. Then she was one of the first generation of women to try to balance having a family with work. She is one of the smartest people I know and yet she was never permitted to use her intellect to contribute in what was still seen as a man’s world. Despite that my mum has contributed to science in multiple ways throughout her life and I want to honour that contribution by talking about it and recording it here. So that it doesn’t get overlooked and forgotten, like the contributions of so many of her counterparts.
One of Sandra’s first jobs was working at the University of Aston. She worked for an old school Professor, who from conversations about him was smart, kind and someone impractical. I believe (I could be wrong) that he was a biochemist, but he could have been a physicist. This was where my mother started contributing to the world of science. In those days Professors would dictate their scientific papers and mum was the one that typed them up, she captured their equations and hand drew out their graphs, so they could submit manuscripts for publication. The thesis of PhD students also needed to be typed up so that they could be submitted for examination. This is in fact how she met my father, she typed up his thesis. A thesis he still has and that I looked at when writing mine, including the hand drawn graphs inside. Like most women of the time when they married and she became pregnant she had to give up this job in science which she loved in order to have a family.
I am lucky enough to be super close to my mum, I know how fortunate I am and that this isn’t the situation for everyone. Part of the reason for that it that she hasn’t always had it easy with me, lets just say that as a child I didn’t sleep and then managed to become severely ill on more than one occasion. I know that and I know how much, although she would never say, she gave up for me. When I was ill during my GCSEs and I missed my 5th year in school and was facing never being able to go to university and losing my identity as an academic student she was there. She sat me down and looked me straight in the eye. She told me that she loved me and that that was unconditional. It didn’t require me to go to university, it didn’t require me to be anything other than I could both manage and want to be. She gave me the strength to gradually rebuild. Because of her I did eventually make it to university, without her I would never have studied science or made it to be a scientist today. When I felt too stupid, too behind, she gave me the confidence to continue. Anything I accomplish as a scientist is because of her. She was determine that she would open doors for me that were closed to her, and when I faltered that she would help me through them.
She continued to be interested in science. She took part in clinical trials, supported three children through degrees and masters degrees in STEM subjects. Edited dissertations, acted as a sounding board and asked more revision questions than I’m sure she’d care to remember. She came with me to the Blackpool mock exam when I was sitting FRCPath. Those four days were the biggest crisis of confidence I have ever had. At the start of the mock there were three scientists and about 25 clinicians. On the second day of the mock I was the only scientist that turned up. It was the only exam I’d ever sat where I thought not only could I not pass it that day but I was unsure whether I would ever be smart enough to pass at all. On the evening of the second day we were all due to go out for dinner as a group. I tried to leave the hotel to quit and go to the train station instead. So many of my medical colleagues had just told me I would never pass and that doubt had caught hold. She stood in front of me, turned me around and forced me to go and change for dinner, no matter how much I cried. I went to dinner and found out that all the others felt the same, I wasn’t alone, but she enabled me to see that. Her faith also helped me withstand the morning of the fourth day when a group of the medics surrounded me and asked why it was that a scientist like me should think they should be allowed to do the exam, or do a job like them.
My mother continued to use the knowledge she had established about PhD thesis writing when I was writing my PhD. She had been able to sit some academic degree modules herself as part of a great scheme run by Birmingham University and she had built upon the knowledge from her first post. She used those skills to proof read, edit and sense check every line of my 95,000 word thesis. She even took the week off work to be with me in the week prior to submission to do tasks I’d run out of time to do, like make abbreviation lists. The fact that the only correction needed after my PhD viva was to write an additional summary conclusion of 350 words is in large part due to her diligence and scientific understanding.
For the last 6 years my mum has been able to get even more involved with science. She’s been helping me run the Environment Network, Healthcare Science Education conferences and outreach events since their inception. She is project manager, events organiser and conference reception manager for every one. She has run events now for over 1000 scientists and Infection Prevention and Control professional. Her contribution is immense. She has supported the learning and practice improvements of everyone that attends and she does it because she loves both science and me.
So this is my tribute to the women that went before. The women that society didn’t see and put in boxes in which they didn’t fit but had no choice but to live. Here’s to the women that fought and opened doors, broke ceilings and paved the way for those of use who travel behind. I see you and I am grateful for everything you did.
Here’s to my mum. Who wrote papers that won’t bear her name on them. Who contributed to academic dissertations across disciplines, who has organised scientific conferences and raised so many up along the way. To my mum, who fought her share of battles so that I didn’t have to. I love you, I’m thankful for you and know that everything I accomplish is in part because of you.
It’s recruitment season in both Healthcare Science and academia right now. Many promising young scientists have applied for the Scientific Training Programme, whilst others are applying for PhD positions and taking their first steps to becoming independent researchers. I’ve been having lots of conversations and I’ve been getting lots of emails/tweets about what I would be looking for as part of this process. I’m also going through a recruitment process myself and so this has been on my mind. I’m going to share what I look for, but I want to be very clear this is just that, what I look for. Others may have different opinions and so it’s always worth canvassing more than just one person as there are people out there who are experts in this.
There are obviously two big sections to this, the application process and the interview. If you get to the interview then you will have got there because I believe that you can do the job. At that point it’s about team dynamics and shared vision and it’s as much about you interviewing me as it is about me interviewing you. So for this post I’m mostly going to focus on the application process and getting that foot in the door.
When you are applying for a post you will have access to a whole bunch of information, some of which will be more apparent to you than others. There will be names listed, names of specialisms, names of the recruiting staff, all of which will give you a clue as to how to get information on the type of people who will be interviewing you.
Getting to know more about the people involved in the recruitment process will help you prioritise the information in your proposal. Is the Trust and department you’re applying to research active? If not then you might want to use that word count about your undergraduate dissertation for something of greater interest to them. For STP applications you should include reference to the fact that you’ve spoken to people who work in the field to demonstrate an understanding of the job. For PhD applications make sure you include specific references to the papers the hiring academics have recently written in your cover letter so you have shown you know who they are. This enables your to start out building a relationship with the people who are shortlisting, they know you’ve taken the trouble to know more about them and it’s a sign of respect that will stand you in good stead.
DON’T do what once happened to me when I was interviewing a male candidate. The panel was entirely female and the interview was going well, the candidate obviously had done his homework on us. The last two questions blew it however. We asked him about research experience and he proceeded to tell us that he had looked up our work and how he could guide us in doing it better. He then followed up when asked if he had any questions with ‘When will you let me know I have the job’. Needless to say that call never came.
Do Your Research
Following on from knowing your audience is doing your research. I’m going to be super honest here. When I applied to be a clinical scientist I kind of knew what it was but I wasn’t super confident. That was because there weren’t the resources out there to give me more information. That is no longer the case and there are a lot of internet resources available. This means that if you’re applying for this kind of post now it is expected that you will know not only about the job, but also to have defined answers about why you want to do it and why you are suitable for the post.
For PhD positions doing your research is even more important. I want it to be clear on your application why you want to do this particular PhD. What is it that attracted you to the topic, what work have you already done in this area, what reading have you done to demonstrate your interest. The one thing that many candidates don’t come with to the interview that makes them stand out is what questions their research on the PhD so far has raised in their mind, what questions are they are interested in asking. Even during the interview I want to see the scientific curiosity that will make you a great scientist and separate you from your competition.
DON’T send me an application that is generic and hasn’t been personalised for the position. If you can’t put in the effort to research the post and personalise your application then I won’t put in the effort to interview you as it will feel like you’re not really that interested.
Obey the Rules
In every job advert there will be information and guidance about how to apply. You would be super surprised at how often applicants don’t pay attention to the guidelines. Now most of your scientific career will require you to apply for things, business cases, grant funding, conference attendance etc. If you can’t demonstrate the care and attention to detail when applying for the post it indicates that you may also not adhere to the guidance when applying for these other things, directly impacting your chances of success and career progression. I’m all for individualism and for thinking outside the box, but an application process is about enabling me to do a side by side comparison, which I cannot do if you side step what’s requested.
For NHS posts you need to be demonstrating in the personal statement section what is asked of you in the job description (JD), as this is what you will be scored against. If you don’t cover the points then you cannot get the marks required for short listing. Also pay attention to where you are expected to demonstrate the skills, knowledge etc. It will usually say whether it is on the application, or during the interview. If it stated during the interview and you are limited on words use them to tick the ‘demonstrate in the application’ boxes. Also use the ‘demonstrate in interview’ descriptions as a hint to what questions you are likely to be asked during the interview process.
For PhD posts make sure you send what you are requested, make sure that your cover letter contains the information requested in the advert and that your CV reinforces your key points.
DON’T send a CV to an NHS job application and miss stuff off your personal statement as I won’t look at it. If you’re applying for an academic post don’t just send a CV without providing the information specified in the advert as I won’t look at the CV if I consider your application incomplete.
Know Your Unique Selling Point (USP)
When I applied for my trainee clinical scientist post there were 240 applications for 4 positions. The scheme has only got more competitive since then and PhD positions can be equally if not more competitive. Although interview questions will vary across post types you will almost always get asked why you? Why do you want this post? Why are you suitable for this post? How will this post get you where you want to be? What is your 5 year plan?
It is therefore worth taking the time to think about what it is that will enable you to stand out from the competition and make sure that you have clearly stated it in your application. Are you applying for a PhD post and already have published papers, got a travel grant or partaken in science communication activity? Make sure that it is there and easy to see, as this will enable you to stand out from the field.
Are you applying for an STP post and have already done work experience in a clinical lab, worked with patients or have a lived experience that could help you? Make sure that this is clear as it will help during the short listing process.
Remember that for both PhD and STP positions they are effectively graduate training schemes. These are first steps in a career that will last a lifetime and so knowing where you want to go on that journey is important to both know and to communicate to your recruiters.
DON’T hide the things that could make you stand out. Think about what your USP is and make sure it is clear and easy to find. The person trawling through these applications is unlikely to have the time to read every line you write and so make sure you grip them in the first couple of paragraphs so that they will keep on reading.
Make It Easy
This year for the STP programme there are over 6000 applications to shortlist. I have had to go through over 150 applications for PhD programmes before now. I would like to say that I always have the time to give each application the time it is due, but the honest truth is that I am trying to make this work on top of a very busy clinical job. You’re application therefore needs to stand out and be really easy to process.
For NHS applications that means using the terminology used in the JD I am scoring you against, ideally using sub heading and bunching information together so I’m not searching for whether it is present in your personal statement. It also means that if it is key information I would include it in more than one section so I’m less likely to miss it.
For PhD applications it means being very explicit in your cover letter showing that you have: an interest in the topic, that you have researched linked to the work and why you want to undertake this specific PhD. It also means making the information in your CV related to the PhD proposal really easy to find. Don’t put down every technique in the world if only 25% of them are applicable to the topic you’re applying. List in detail the relevant ones and the group the rest and bring them up at interview if appropriate.
Put your USP up front and clear, put it a box, underline it, give it it’s own paragraph or sub-heading. Do something to make it easy to see when your application is being skim read.
DON’T send a 150 page CV containing every certificate you’ve ever achieved. I will just toss it on the no pile without reading it.
I want to wish everyone the best of luck in the posts you’re applying for now and in the future. Remember every job is different and you will obviously want to tailor some of these tips to whatever you are going for but my top tips are:
Personalise the application
Say who you are and why this is the post for you
Read the application notes carefully so you give the short listers what they are after
Make it easy for whoever is looking at what you submit by using techniques such as sub-heading so the information is easy to find
Become familiar with the people and organisations you are applying to so you can tailor what you are writing
All opinions on this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Healthcarescienceweekis an annual celebration to raise awareness of the many careers inhealthcarescience. It provideshealthcarescienceprofessionals with an opportunity to promote their profession and inspire the scientific workforce of the future.
More than that however, it provides us with the opportunity to talk about what we do or issues that matter to us with members of the public, our friends, colleagues in other healthcare professions and our families.
This year Healthcare Science Week runs from March 6th until 14th March. The Healthcare Science Education team at GOSH and our collaborators Nicola Baldwin and Dr Steve Cross have three awesome events planned across the week, with something for all ages and backgrounds.
Welcome to Healthcare Science Week 2021! Depending on how I feel and how busy this week is I’m hoping to post a few times and to make up for not posting much recently as I’ve been unwell. Also, as I’ve been not well I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the importance tea has in my life. My husband is a sweet heart who makes me many a cup and it is my place of comfort and salvation when the world gets too much. It is also a place of reflection and helps me do my best thinking. So this post is devoted to one of my favourite things in the world and something that helps me be the best scientist I can be…………..a lovely cup of tea. (NB for me this is ideally a cup of Darjeeling or Lady Grey served black. You can I am sure substitute it with your favourite, or blasphemy, even exchange it for coffee).
Tea and Planning
Most of science is not actually in the doing, most of the best of science is actually in the planning. If you get that right then everything else will follow. If not you can spend a lot of money getting a lot of data that is in fact not much good to anyone and definitely doesn’t answer the questions you were asking. When I was starting out, and sometimes even now when a deadline overwhelms me, I thought it was better to be doing. To be in lab getting ‘somewhere’. Needless to say I spent a lot of time getting ‘somewhere’ but that wasn’t where I needed to end up. Tea cannot be drunk in the lab. Sometimes making a cup of tea therefore is a really good way to break the cycle of doing and force yourself to have time to step back and plan. It is one of the reasons I have exceptionally large cups as they give me the time to get into the right headspace and adjust my thinking before I reach the end. It also helps that I drink my tea black so that it also has cooling time. By the time I’ve cooled and finished my mind is usually in the place it needs to be and I’m in planning mode not panicked doing mode.
Tea and Networking
I believe it is no secret to anyone that reads this blog that I appreciate a piece of tea and cake. This is partly because I like to host as it gives me a structured way to talk to other people. It is also because I believe that when we are sitting and eating/drinking with other people it removes hierarchy, especially if that can be done outside of the usually work environment.
This next but may shock you, but I HATE networking. I’m pretty good in 1:1 situations where I know the other person, but I’m rubbish at faces and I’m even worse at remembering prior conversations. It’s definitely not the fault of the person I’m speaking too, it’s just my memory doesn’t work that way. My memory is super context specific. I therefore find the horror of speaking to people who know who I am, who I have spoken to before and me not remembering, one that I regularly encounter. I also hate networking as I actually have no small talk. I spend a LOT of my time working and my geeky hobbies are not ones that many people will engage with on first meeting and so I struggle. It’s one of the reasons I started on Twitter almost 20 years ago. Twitter meet ups at conference meant I had already done the small talk and we already had shared context and so I didn’t have that panic inducing moment where I tried to find something sensible to stay (NB this is still a top tip of mine if you’re starting out going to meetings).
Tea makes me relax. At conferences I can always talk about the food and the tea. It also means that I worry less if I’m talking to a Noble prize winner or someone of international renown. They need to eat and drink just like I do. Also, if you find someone hanging around the tea area with no one to talk to they are probably in the same boat as you and will be super relieved that you are the one that made the conversation opener so that they didn’t have to.
Tea and Sympathy
For all you amazing young scientists starting out please don’t take this one too much to heart, but use it a short cut to help your mental well being. Science is 80% failure. You will fail at grants, you will fail when you submit papers, you will have bad supervisor meetings and elevator pitches and most of all you will have failed experiments. Sometimes in the case of lab work these failures can go on for months or years and be super costly, both in terms of money but also in terms of your mental health. What you need to know now is that this is normal. The most amazing scientists you meet will have sat there in a puddle of tears with mountains of self doubts and fear that nothing would ever succeed again. No one ever sat me down and told me this. For a long time I felt I was alone in the failure. Then over time my colleagues became friends and we finely got to the point where we could voice our fears and disappointments. Only then did I realise that I wasn’t alone. That these failures were crucial points where I learnt and developed and that instead of fearing them I should embrace them.
So my advice now, for all those I supervise and support, is to spend time early developing a few key relationships. Then when you are experiencing the failures you too can have someone who will listen and tell you that it’s normal and support your mental wellbeing as well as helping you get back on track. You will also learn from being the person who supports others when it’s your time to pull out the tea, biscuits and box of tissues.
Tea and Reflection
Moving on from tea with others I wanted to reinforce the importance of tea with yourself. This touches on the Tea and Planning section above but is wider than that. As scientists with are often process driven and tend to be rather task orientated. That means we are great at getting things done but poor at working out why we are doing them. Working as a scientist these days is super complex. Not only are you dealing with regular failure, but you are dealing with complex political environments and career pathways that are anything but clear. When we fail to give ourselves time to reflect and check in with ourselves we can end up going down rabbit holes that don’t get us where we want to go. It also means that our relationships suffer. As you gain students, direct reports and more leadership responsibility it it really important to think about why certain conversations went the way they did. To reflect on things like your leadership style and which situations it’s working in and which it isn’t. As trainees it’s worth taking time to think about why you didn’t get the supervision support you were looking for, did you pick a bad time, did you not manage to articulate what was needed etc. Only by working on ourselves can we really move forward, and this is the one thing we often don’t take the time to consciously do.
Tea and a Pep Talk
So you might say to me ‘what is the different between tea and a pep talk and tea and sympathy’. I would respond that they are actually very different things and both have their place. Tea and sympathy isn’t about trying to ‘fix’ things, it’s about centering yourself when things are going wrong and not feeling along. Tea and a pep talk is more like a coaching experience, It’s about someone giving you constructive support to help you navigate a challenge. It requires a bit of work from both parties in order to try and progress the issue and although it should also enable you to come out feeling better, it should also enable you to come out with a plan of action. You may not be needing a pep talk because you’re upset but because you have a barrier to traverse, a conversation to have, or a direct to pick. You may also want your pep talk to be from someone different to your tea and sympathy as it may be that you want to access knowledge or experience. It is often a conversation that is not so reliant on trust as your tea and sympathy chat may be and you will want to bear that in mind when picking who to have these conversations with. Having tea in these conversations often means you can change their location to outside the working environment (if needed) but also set them up to not be rushed and have the time needed to reach the destination required.
Tea and The Late Night Session
I’d like to say that I have this work life balance thing cracked, but I suspect that my family, friends and colleagues would say that probably isn’t the case. Even if I has I think there is no way of getting around the fact that if you work in science there are going to be some late nights. Sometimes that’s because you are doing a growth curve that is going going to take you 20 hours, sometimes it’s because you have a full working day and then need to do some work for a dissertation and sometimes it’s because of some form of urgent need that means you need to start something for a patient at 6 when you were due to leave at 5.
I used to try and just push through these sessions. I used to think that finishing as early as possible was the best way to balance it with everything else. What I learnt is that when I pushed through I made mistakes. I learnt that for me even when pushing to get things done I need to schedule short ‘walk away’ periods where I could have a cup if tea and move in order to think, especially if I was at work beyond 8 o’clock. Otherwise I made silly mistakes, For the sake of transparency sometimes these wake up ‘walk away’ sessions involved me dancing across the lab with tubes in hand to Lady Gaga, but mostly they involved a cup of tea and ideally a biscuit as I wouldn’t have eaten. My practice is to give myself a 5 minute break to make the tea, go back and do another 20 minutes whilst it cools and then to have a 15 minute zen moment whilst I drink it. I’m sure you will have your own method, but developing one with save you errors and stop you having to repeat these late night efforts.
Now, with this written I’m off to have a cup of tea. Remember my top tea related tips:
Find your tea and sympathy peer
Take time to reflect
Planning will save you time
Know how to push yourself and strategies to avoid mistakes
Don’t be afraid of networking but think how to make it work for you
All opinions on this blog are my own
If you would like more tips and advice linked to your PhD journey then the first every Girlymicrobiologist book is here to help!
This book goes beyond the typical academic handbook, acknowledging the unique challenges and triumphs faced by PhD students and offering relatable, real-world advice to help you:
Master the art of effective research and time management to stay organized and on track.
Build a supportive network of peers, mentors, and supervisors to overcome challenges and foster collaboration.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance by prioritizing self-care and avoiding burnout.
Embrace the unexpected and view setbacks as opportunities for growth and innovation.
Navigate the complexities of academia with confidence and build a strong professional network
This book starts at the very beginning, with why you might want to do a PhD, how you might decide what route to PhD is right for you, and what a successful application might look like.
It then takes you through your PhD journey, year by year, with tips about how to approach and succeed during significant moments, such as attending your first conference, or writing your first academic paper.
Finally, you will discover what other skills you need to develop during your PhD to give you the best route to success after your viva. All of this supported by links to activities on The Girlymicrobiologist blog, to help you with practical exercises in order to apply what you have learned.
Healthcarescienceweek is an annual celebration to raise awareness of the many careers in healthcarescience. It provides healthcarescience professionals with an opportunity to promote their profession and inspire the scientific workforce of the future.
More than that however, it provides us with the opportunity to talk about what we do or issues that matter to us with members of the public, our friends, colleagues in other healthcare professions and our families.
This year Healthcare Science Week runs from March 6th until 14th March. The Healthcare Science Education team at GOSH and our collaborators Nicola Baldwin and Dr Steve Cross have three awesome events planned across the week, with something for all ages and backgrounds.
The Pub-Less Healthcare Science Pub Quiz! Join professional silly science person Steve Cross for a special quiz full of jokes and nonsense, just for the Healthcare Science community.
The questions will be fun but relevant, the special tasks will be ridiculous but possible, the marking will be loose but decisive and the prizes will be exciting but unspectacular.
As part of Healthcare Science Week 2021, this is an event to give healthcare scientists a chance to have a night of fun and relax.
Reading of SOCK the Puppet Play & Public Engagement Panel (Thursday 11th March – 18:00 – 19:30)
We invite children, families, Healthcare Scientists and creatives to celebrate Healthcare Science Week 2021 with our story of Sock, narrated live on zoom by Stephanie Houtman (Peppa Pig Live), directed by Saskia Marland with special appearances by Sock.
Followed by a Healthcare Science Week Q&A about Sock’s story, the opportunities and challenges of science-arts collaboration, and why public engagement matters in 2021 – with Nicola Baldwin (writer), Stephanie Houtman (actor), Saskia Marland (director), Abi Bown (maker) and Healthcare Scientists Vicki Heath and Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green BEM, Lead Clinical Scientist at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Full Reading of SOCK the Puppet Play (Friday 12th March – 11:00 – 12:00)
Meet Sock, the puppet. Sock is excited to go and sing for the children in Hospital with Ms Clown. Sock loves the Hospital. It is always clean and tidy.
The children love Sock’s singing. All the children hug Sock.
When Sock catches all the bugs that make the children poorly, Sock has an adventure to the cleanest, tidiest place in the whole Hospital: The Laboratory.
Can you help Sock find a way back to Ms Clown and the children?
Join us to celebrate Healthcare Science Week 2021 with the story of Sock, narrated live on zoom by Stephanie Houtman (Peppa Pig Live), directed by Saskia Marland with special appearances by Sock.
After you book tickets, you will receive a worksheet to make your own Sock at home, designed by artist and maker Abi Bown.
Created by the team behind Nosocomial and Remember, Remember! – playwright Nicola Baldwin, and Healthcare Scientists Vicki Heath and Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green BEM, of Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Sock The Puppet will subsequently be available as a podcast.
Girlymicro 