Pinching Myself Again: Switching out Dr for Professor

February 13, 2023February 13, 2023 girlymicro Academic Life, Microbiology (Research), Research/Academia

While I was away on holiday, I got some pretty amazing news, and now that the contract is in and signed, I finally feel like I can share it. I made Professor! You may think that as I’ve known for a couple of weeks this is coming, this blog post would have already been written, but I didn’t really believe it would come through until I got the official letter so I’m afraid I’m playing catch up.

As you may have picked up, I am still blown away by the fact that this has happened and because I genuinely never thought that someone like me would get here, I thought I would share a little about what it means, why it means so much and how it happened. I do this to inspire others to follow, not to crow, although in the spirit of full disclosure, I am super happy that it’s happened. Also, a warning, I can only talk from my experience, and that is linked to a somewhat unconventional path. Please read the below in that light.

What is an Honorary Professor anyway?

Now, before I go any further, it is an Honorary Professorship as I’m still employed by my Trust rather than UCL, and because of that, it is also not a Chair. It is a title given to someone, who is not employed by a university, but who contributes to the work of that university, in my case via grant funding, paper writing, lecturing and student supervision, but unlike a Chair I am not involved in management. It is also worth noting that, like the academic professional pathway itself, it changes between universities and my only experience is with UCL.

In the UK, this (Honorary Professor) is the highest title to be awarded to individuals whom the university wish to appoint, honor, and to work with. These individuals are not university staff nor employees. An external person is usually recommended by an internal university academic staff, and recommended for approval by the head of department, for which the documents are then forwarded to faculty dean, vice president and president (or deputy vice chancellor) for approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_title_(academic)

As the title is Honorary, I’m allowed to use the title, but no, I do not get an office, a pay rise, or anything other than a webpage 🙂 My father may have asked me a few times. The success is more about reaching an academic benchmark and achieving recognition for both your work and it’s impact. It also is the final significant step on my journey as a Clinical Academic. I was always told that I should try to ensure that I move up both professional ladders in order to demonstrate success in this area, and so for me, this is as big an achievement as when I became a Consultant in my clinical work.

Why the surprise?

Let me start out by talking about why this felt unattainable and why, therefore, it is such a surprise. I’ve been developing a Clinical Academic career since 2008, so the best part of 15 years. In that time hardly anyone has suggested that making Professor could be something I should aim for. Worse than that, it is in fact an aspiration that I have been told more times than I can count is out of reach for ‘someone like me’. Now, the ‘someone like me’ description changes between the advisors, but a sample have been: you’re a scientist in a medics world, you’re too emotional, you’re too open/honest, you don’t play enough politics, you’re too young, you’re a woman, you will never publish in good enough journals as you work in Infection Prevention and Control.

To put this in context, my medical colleagues automatically make Associate Professor the moment they become consultants, irrespective of their publication or funding track records. They are therefore lined up for the next step and the pathway is fairly established. That said, very few of them go on to take it, partly because that next step is more like climbing a mountain. Put that together with the fact that only 3% of people who graduate with a PhD get to be a professor, and you can see why many people may not decide to pursue it, and why this moment feels momentous to me. Being able to show the world that this is actually what a professor CAN look like is really important to me. To be able to show you can not fit into the stereotype and still get there.

It’s not just about time served

Meeting the criteria to become a professor is not about length of time in post or time served post PhD, there’s quite a lot more to it. You have to be able to demonstrate a diverse portfolio that ticks a number of boxes. One example below is for progression linked to research, but as you can see, you also have to demonstrate not only suitability in the research domain but also in at least 2 other domains.

Progression through the above grades might be expected to be attained by demonstrating an ability to meet:

the threshold research criteria at the next level; and

several of the core and/or specialist research criteria at the next level; and

at least the threshold education criteria or some of the criteria in either of the two other domains (enterprise and external engagement; institutional citizenship) at the next level.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/policies/2021/oct/academic-career-framework

Along the way, you will meet a LOT of people who will have an opinion on how you should develop the CV to enable you to eventually apply. One of the things I learnt early was to not listen to those who just said I shouldn’t do try. That’s different from not taking advice. It’s different from heeding the advice of people who say not yet, because there is more to do that will increase your chances of success. These people are often the ones who are wishing you well on the pathway and have some knowledge of the process requirements. The ones who can’t share your vision are the ones to thank for their input and move along. The ones who contribute to your process are incredibly valuable, even if sometimes the truth is hard to hear.

I’m only an Honourary Professor, but even so, I have to meet the same thresholds as my full-time colleagues, as there is only a single standard. As I said above, the Honourary bit really links into your employer rather than the standard you have to attain.

What kind of things do you need to do?

It was International Women and Girls in Science Day this weekend, and I wanted to take a moment therefore to recognise why it can be much for challenging for women and people of colour to attain a Professorship, why it can be difficult for women to find the support they need. I mentioned that some of the stats say that only 3% of PhDs become professors, but the numbers are significantly worse if you are female, and worse still if you are a female person of colour. I’m no expert in this area, but I think it’s worth talking about and raising awareness. There are articles from those better informed than I to talk about it:

Are Female Professors Held To A Different Standard Than Their Male Counterparts?

Ratings-and-bias-against-women-over-time

Talented-women-of-colour-are-blocked-why-are-there-so-few-black-female-professors

Why so Few, Still? Challenges to Attracting, Advancing, and Keeping Women Faculty of Color in Academia

One of the first lessons I learnt was that you are going to struggle to get to the finish line if you try to do it alone. I’ve said it before, and I genuinely believe it, science is a team sport. It will be that team who enables you to demonstrate the breadth, as well as the depth needed. I have a wonderful academic colleague who supported my application, and my research group have always pushed and supported me to aim for the sky. That said, it strikes me that when I say science is a team sport, and that a team is what is required to get you to the finish line, sometimes women are not invited into the same rooms that support others. I’m so aware of the pub nights, meeting clubs, etc, that I’ve been briefly involved in, where names are thrown around prior to meetings, where relationships are built and plans are made. The hours I work generally preclude me from the ‘just popping to the pub’ crowd and the ‘medical discussion groups’ I’ve been to were just too linked into the Old Boys Network tradition for me to feel comfortable. I’m lucky though, at least occasionally I get asked, and therefore I could make an active choice about my path. That isn’t true for everyone. I chose to make my own path, I chose to play with a team that works for me. The word choice is key, and it speaks to my privilege that I get to use it.

The other factor is that women often have ended up being the ones that do the majority of some of the ‘non core’ activities, such as chairing diversity committees or undertaking public engagement. These activities are often things I love and the breadth they provide have always been important to me. The problem is that you have to have enough ‘core’ to secure promotion. You have to be getting grants, publishing papers, and supervising PhD students. Without these, you won’t be able to move forward, no matter how wonderful or talented you are. There are only 2 ways to handle this, keep doing more (and therefore having no time to be ‘in the club’) or be really clear with your boundaries to maintain time for core activities, and this can be easier said than done. To change the stats we have to support each other enough to be able to help with this. Someone’s worth for progression shouldn’t depend on their ability to say no!

It’s a marathon and not a sprint

There are so many boxes to tick and things to be achieved that making Professor is definitely a task of years, on average 15 years post completion of a PhD. I can’t say it enough times, however, that it is not merely about years and time. There are so many things to learn about yourself and your work before it becomes a possibility. What kind of supervisor are you? What is the work that inspires you? Even before you start on the knowledge accumulation.

As I said above, there is also a lot of growing to be done, and I’m nowhere near finished yet. Being able to set boundaries, being able to say no, knowing when to say yes, all of the leadership challenges you can imagine, on top of trying to be creative and deliver new thinking in order to move your research area forward. Just making the networks and finding your collaborators in order to make this happen will take years, and it takes time to build trust and relationships. So buckle in for the ride, and know there is no shortcut for gaining experience.

You will fail and fall many times, but like most challenges in life, it’s about having the passion and persistence to just keep turning up. To turn up after the failures and the difficult conversations. To turn up and take the learning and the growth. To always see the opportunities and develop the knowledge of how to circumvent the barriers. Keeping true to who you are and your values in the face of that failure and the criticism that sometimes comes with it. All of these things, if you don’t let them change you and make you bitter/cynical, will make the successes oh so sweet. Then it’s your job to pay it forward.

Take the time to know you

Like every long-term career journey, becoming a professor requires you to take some time to also know yourself. I’ve said that I got a lot of advice and one of the things I took away from it was that, because it’s a process of years, no 2 people will go about it the same way. From the criteria listed, you can see that you can put a lot of the puzzle pieces together in different ways. Therefore, it’s important to develop in a way that works for you as an individual. What aspects of the role bring you joy? What helps you thrive instead of feeling burnt out? It’s OK to focus on these things and maintain them within your portfolio of practice.

I also think knowing what you are not good or are weak at is also key. None of us are good at everything. None of us enjoy everything. You will have to pick up some core tasks that may not intuitively suit you, but knowing when they are core and when they are not will help you make better judgements. Also, being aware of your weaknesses will enable you to approach those areas more strategically in order to allow you to overcome.

It’s not just what it means to me

I actually don’t have words to express how grateful I am for the responses I’ve had since I shared the news. Part of me always worries about the fact that I might get ‘well why you’, I think it’s the imposter syndrome. Everyone has been so supportive, more than that, a lot of comments have talked about it showing to others that it can be done. This, to me, is SO important. There are so many wonderful Healthcare Scientists out there, so many wonderful Clinical Academics, but so few of them are Professors. It may sound trite, but you can’t be what you can’t see. If you don’t know this is an option, it’s hard to aspire to it as a path. So thank you for your support. Thank you for being my cheer leaders and for sharing what is such a joyful moment for me. In return, I share with you the email my father sent out to my old school teachers and his friends, in order to demonstrate that I know both what this means and how fortunate (or badass) I am. I’m off to break open a bottle of bubbly!

Congratulations to Elaine Cloutman-Green

Thank you to anyone and everyone who has contributed to Elaine’s development by offering advice, education, knowledge, guidance, comfort, discipline!!!!!!!, culture, sophistication!!!!, fellowship and friendship.

Especially her soulmate, mentor and amazing husband Jon.

Plus a small contribution of determination, intelligence, gin!!, character, industry, more gin!!, worldliness, industry, even more gin!!, nouse and a chunk of good, old fashioned, inherited Yorkshire grit from herself.

Who would think that a coalminer and car worker’s grand daughter,
born in Good Hope Hospital of common stock,
Villa Holt End season ticket holding fan,
whose education was via Northfield Manor Junior, Hillcrest and Shenley Court Secondary Schools,
then Liverpool University Biology (BSc 2.1), Physics(MRes) departments, UCL (Msc Queen Mary’s Med Sch) and PhD
Who could forget reading her thesis “The role of the environment in the transmission of Healthcare Associated Infection”?
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Pathologist could achieve such high academic status.

Deputy director of Prevention and Infection Control at Great Ormond Street Hospital,
Pathology consultant
British Empire Medal in the New Year’s Honours List for work on Covid
Freman of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers (I would not let her turn on a tap!!!!)

Now UCL, University College London have for her research work on the prevention of the spread of water bourne diseases and academic teaching programmes about Virology and reducing the spread of disease have in their infinite wisdom have honoured and rewarded her making her:

PROFESSOR ELAINE CLOUTMAN-GREEN

Very well done
Eeh ba gum, sh dun reyt gud tha’ nose!, anno we’er chuffed to bits,
Her sister Claire would have been even prouder of Elaine than her Dad of her success
Dr Alan Green January 2023

All opinions in this blog are my own

Clarity is Key: The role of learning agreements in supporting learner success

September 28, 2022September 28, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, Education, Healthcare Science, Microbiology (Clinical), Microbiology (Research), Research/Academia

It’s that time of year again and many of us will be taking on new trainees, getting to know new students or supervising new PhDs. I thought it was time therefore to share something that I’ve found increasingly useful and have now set out to cover in initial meetings with learners, and that is the development of learning agreements.

What is a learning agreement and why is taking this time worth while? Surely everyone knows what they’ve signed up for when they take a training place? The truth of the matter is that students often know the logistics of what they’ve signed up for, but any learning placement is a whole lot more than just the nuts of bolts of the curriculum. There’s a lot of expectation setting/management required for one thing. We’ll cover what learning agreements look like in a bit, but in short they are agreements based on conversations between the learner and their supervisor where they actively set out the expectations and boundaries of their relationship.

At STP/HSST and PhD level it can be the learners first experience of formal education routes within a professional setting. As supervisors we often expect learners to be able to undertake independent study at this point, identifying their own learning objectives and being responsible for any escalations. If this is the students first experience however, they may believe it will follow the pattern of the prior learning they have experienced, which may have placed a lot more focus on structure and consistency.

What is a learning agreement?

In light of these complexities what is a learning agreement and how can it help? Well they take quite a few different forms depending on what it is that you want them to fulfil. In short they are a working (and therefore dynamic) agreement between you as the supervisor/education officer and your new student/trainee. I tend to refer to them as learning agreements rather than contracts as the term contract to me implies penalties and learning contracts are what I escalate to if challenges occur during the time someone is with me.

They can include all kinds of things:

What topics are in or out of the learning objectives
How deadlines will be set and a broad plan of work
Expectation setting around students identifying additional learning objectives
Ideas for how the learner will benchmark their progress and/or learning
How the educator will assess progress/learning

Although the above is often the framework the most valuable parts of a learning agreement for me are less structural. It is my time to ask:

What kind of learner are you?
What kind of support do you prefer (close vs supportive supervision)
What are your main objectives that may or may not be topic based?
What are you hoping this will lead to?
How do you prefer to communicate, face to face, email etc?
Why this course? Why this training? What attracted you? In order to understand their drivers

Making the implicit explicit

In general I think most of us are good about talking about the nuts and bolts of what a course/placement entails. We are good at giving the ‘this is the bathroom’ tour and ‘this is where your desk is’ plus ‘our supervisor meetings are on Tuesday’ type of information. What I have discovered over the last few years however, is that imparting curriculum or logistic based information just isn’t enough to support a good supervisor-learner relationship, where both get what they want out of it.

I think as supervisors we have quite a lot of expectations that we don’t necessarily voice, after all for many of us this is something we do a lot of. It can therefore be easy to make assumptions about the level of awareness of these expectations from someone coming into that supervisor-learner relationship with us. The thing is, you may have been doing this a loooooong time, but your learner almost definitely hasn’t. They won’t have that implicit and often organisational linked cultural knowledge that you have been embedded in for so long. Worse than that even, they are likely to have a whole lot of different assumptions based on their last educational experience that they are bringing with them. Unless we all work therefore to make things that we implicitly understand explicit, you won’t know where those differences in practices and expectations lie. It is when this happens that problems often occur that could easily have been addressed early on, but have significant impacts on learner experience and supervisor stress levels.

Supports orientation to a new field/culture

As I’ve said a few times culture matters, as culture and cultural norms are intrinsically linked with the expectations we all have. Having these conversations is about more than expectation management however. Learners are coming into an environment that may be pretty alien to them. This can make students feel like they are floundering, right from the start, meaning that they don’t feel like they fit. A small percentage of students are likely to walk away because of this, not really understanding the cause. This is often combined and amplified by the fact that they may have moved or lost their support networks in the transition.

Talking about your role (and similar roles) with learners helps, not only to build your relationship and set expectations, but also to support them in making the transition into being a scientist in practice, not just in name. It took me years to feel like a scientist, to feel comfortable calling myself that, to feel like I belonged. Having conversations where students understand what it takes to succeed as a scientist, not just in a placement, can be invaluable to learners re-establishing support networks. Also, supporting learners to find other trainee groups, to join twitter, or of timings for lunch clubs, can help them settle into their new role and their future profession.

Setting matters

Having these conversations can feel uncomfortable and challenging, mostly because of the fear of the unknown. They may also take time we may not have. All of these are reasons to make sure they are done correctly and given the time required. If you are nervous having them with your learner then imagine how nervous they may be to have them with you. You are asking for a lot of honesty and self reflection from someone who doesn’t know you well, in a relationship where trust may not yet have been built. Furthermore, you are asking for all of this in a relationship where you probably have all the power and where your learner is likely to be highly keen to please, rather than representing their true self..

So how do we hold these conversations and support them getting the best outcomes? I think there a couple of things we can be mindful of. The first is not dropping them on the learner. If we want the conversation to deliver we both need to do the work. I need to be honest with myself about time and also what kind of supervisor I am. The student needs to be given the questions or a framework beforehand and supported to have time to reflect on themselves to be able to answer the questions asked. They may need to be encouraged to speak to friends or family to support them in this reflection if they’ve never done it before. They can then start the process of reflection by thinking in the presence of people they trust, if needed.

Think about where you physically want to have the conversation. I tend to take learners out, to a none Trust space where we can have tea and cake (or other suitable consumables). I’ve written before about the power of tea. The main reason that I do this is that it means we are no ones turf, we are in a neutral space, and the provision of food further helps to reduce/remove hierarchy. When thinking about where however, you need to consider privacy. Your learner may need to share things that are private or important to them, and so considering the type of location is also important.

The other important thing about getting the conversation right is setting the conversational scene before you start the conversation itself. You need to be clear about the objectives that you want to achieve, why they are helpful to both parties and set some ground rules. It’s key to say that honesty is the most important part of this process. It’s OK to have styles that don’t match, by knowing this early you can sign post and find additional support to ensure that the learning process itself still works.

What happens when the expectations don’t match

Hopefully by going through the process of creating a learning agreement you will avoid any significant bumps along the way later on. The process needs to be done thoroughly though, so you don’t just hear what you’d like to hear. As stated above it’s ok to have areas of difference, it’s what you can flex in response to that information and how you respond that matters.

For example, I am never going to be a good micro manager, I have neither the time or personal inclination to work this way. I have fallen foul of not having had the learning agreement conversation and subsequently had learners who felt they were inadequately supported. If I find out that I have a learner who feels they need close support I need to therefore make some pragmatic choices. Is it they will need close guidance for the transition period? If so I can likely change my style for a period of a couple of months in order to support that orientation to a new location. Is it that this is their learning style long term? In this case I need to think about pairing them up or seeking support from a colleague who is better able to provide that close support during the periods in between our catch up sessions.

I have also struggled previously with learners who have not met the outputs that I had expected. This may be more of an issue with PhD students, but to be honest if I’m not clear about publication expectations how will they know? Therefore if it becomes apparent that the timeline expectations don’t match it is worth considering drawing up a broad, high level, delivery plan so you are both working towards the same mental models

Finally, it may be that learners make it clear that they have pastoral care expectations that you may or may not be able to support. Prior to going into these sessions it is important to be aware of the different additional support services that learners have available to them. Whether they need them or not in the moment it is crucial that you sign post to these, especially if you are not the kind of supervisor who will take on this kind of support role. Additionally, there are likely to be plenty of networks that offer peer support that you can sign post learners to. There will always be things that they want to talk about that they won’t want to talk to you about. Let’s be honest, no matter how well you get on there will be times they need to moan about you as a minimum. Being open about this being OK and linking them into peer groups can be incredibly valuable

No matter what you hear in this space it’s important to be open and judgement free, in order to support honest sharing. If you hear something you don’t agree with it’s important to take a beat and try to understand the drivers of that view point. By being open to opinion and challenge now you are investing in success later on. I don’t know about anyone else but I studied in a different time, my undergraduate degree finished 20 years ago. My expectations of learners and learner experience therefore is, to be frank, well old. I’ve also worked in one place for 18 years. It is naïve therefore to believe my experience and expectations are going to perfectly match the learners who are coming through now.

There is a big difference between being someone’s educational supervisor and someone’s manager. In some cases we are both, but we need to understand that they are different roles with different requirements on both sides, and be aware of what hat we are wearing when. Techniques such as learning agreements can help make sure that we do the ‘education’ part better by having the kinds of conversations you would not have with someone you just had a managerial relationship with. It encourages self reflection, expectation management and consensus forming. All of which are skills that we should be modelling for those learners we are supporting. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. So let’s start this new academic year by having conversations better and talking about how we can all be the best we can be.

All opinions on this blog are my own

Surviving Your Viva: My top 10 tips for oral exams

September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, Education, Research/Academia

I’ve sat my fair share of viva voce exams in my time and I must admit I’ve always been pretty intimidated by them, that said they’ve never been as bad as I feared when I finally got in the room. They’ve been on my mind this week as one of my PhD students is due to have her viva on Friday and so I thought I would write down my top tips in order to bring your best self to the process. This post focusses a lot on PhD viva’s but I think a lot of the principles can be extrapolated to other types of oral exams.

1 – Do your prep

Some people think that the viva process is about what happens in the room. Although you have to ‘bring it’ during the discussion your life can be made much much easier by doing a good job in the prep phase.

If you are having a viva for a PhD this goes all the way back to researching the administrative side of the process and being actively involved in examiner selection. In an ideal world your supervisor would sit with you, talk you through the stages and actively involve you in the discussions, we both know however that the world isn’t always that ideal and you may have to be prepared to do this leg work for yourself.

There are some benefits to owning this phase of the work. For my PhD there was a communication breakdown towards the end and my supervisor wanted me to delay submitting for another year and therefore refused to sign the submission paperwork. I knew that I needed to submit on my current time scale as I wanted to sit FRCPath in my NIHR funded time. I also knew because I’d spent time researching the administrative side of things that I wasn’t required to have sign off, that part just meant that UCL weren’t responsible for any failures. So I submitted anyway and passed. I also researched, found and submitted my examiner paperwork and choices.

The downside to selecting your own examiners without supervisor support is that you run the risk of only selecting based on academic publications or area of interest. I was fortunate as I personally knew plenty of people in the field of IPC and so could select with greater context. If you only select on the basis of publications you can end up with an unbalanced panel or one that doesn’t support you to have a discussion that really represents you or your work to the best of your ability. So if you are in a position where you need to lead on this make sure you also find out what kind of examiner they are, and whether there are any political conflicts of interest before making a final decision.

2 – Have a practice

Whatever your situation it is always worth having a practice viva, preferably with people that scare you just a little. Ask that amazing post doc who has always been a little intimidating or the person that always asks good but challenging questions at lab meetings. You don’t want to destroy your shaky confidence at this point but if set yourself a challenge you will amazed at how much easier it is when you are in the room for the real thing.

One of my other PhD students had their upgrade recently and his other supervisor and I ran a mock. Now I apparently can get a little intense when I’m asking questions about science and very rarely I’ve been called ‘the destroyer’ when it comes to challenging the science presented by reps if I’ve found it to be misleading. It was therefore reported back that if you can survive a mock with me the actual event will be a walk in the park. I don’t know if that’s true, but what I do know is that if you have a relationship with your supervisor that permits this kind of mock session, your supervisor will know the strengths and weaknesses of your project intimately. They will therefore be able to ask ALL the questions that you hope your real examiners will skip over or not pick up on. The purpose of us asking these questions is not to discredit what you’ve worked so hard on, all work has weaknesses, it’s to help you develop a strategy to answer those questions.

These sessions can also be useful to prep the paperwork you’re taking into the viva with you. I had my thesis labelled up with colour coded tabs and had post it notes within it to remind me of key points in case I got flustered (Bayesian modelling haunts me to this day). A practice viva will help you work out whether what you have done works and if you need to change anything before the real thing.

3 – Know your examiners

I’ve already talked a little bit about researching examiners before you select them, but in the run up to the big event there are last minute things that are worth doing. Firstly, check any of their publications that have come out since you submitted your thesis. I had these printed out and annotated to take into my viva so I had prepared for discussion based on their latest work. Second, when your doing your thesis notes think about highlighting your examiners papers that you have referenced and be very aware of how they have linked into your narrative. They will also have published papers adjacent to your work which you may not have referenced, be aware of these and where the conversation topics may therefore drift to in order to help you be prepared.

Third, and this is a bit more work but worth doing if you have time, check out who they referenced. We all have go to references and authors, your examiners are no different. By looking at the reference lists in their papers you can see who their go to authors are and you can see where your over laps are. Also, be prepared for questions if you haven’t cited the same papers. Finally, check the latest publications within the big name journals within your field. Examiners may occasionally ask questions about the latest big work in your field, even if it’s not directly related to your work, to see how well read you are and if you have a wider interest. This isn’t a pass or fail question, but your PhD project may be different to where you end up as a post doc and it helps to gauge how you might make the transition to working in academia more generally.

3 – Think how you want to present yourself

This may seem like a given but it’s really useful to think about how you want to be perceived in the room. How much this matters, in part, is dependent upon some of the research you’ve done. There are some examiners who would immediately think less of you if you turn up in the room and aren’t suited and booted. The main thing In terms of clothing and outfit is that it’s important to be comfortable, whatever route you choose to go down. You may be sitting in that outfit for 6 hours and so you don’t want to have to constantly be adjusting necklines or moving waist bands that are cutting into you. You need to be in the moment and so choose an outfit that helps that by making you feel comfortable in your own skin, preferably professional enough that you don’t risk upsetting anyone. You may find wearing a T-shirt under that top that sums up who you are is helpful or having a mascot in your pocket that you can slip a hand into a pocket and grip if it gets stressful is useful. I genuinely don’t believe there are any hard and fast rules here other than to plan it before hand and make sure you give your an outfit a dress rehearsal to make sure it empowers rather than distracts you.

To be honest appearance isn’t something that is important to me when I examine, being present and polite in the room is waaaaaay more important to me. I find body language is really key in this kind of face to face assessment. You really need to be aware of what your body language is saying. No matter how you feel it’s going it’s important to stay open, smiling and responsive in terms of your body language. If you have a ‘resting bitch face’ it’s worth being aware of it as you don’t want to come over as angry or defensive when you are dealing with the questions. Mostly because you won’t get your point across anywhere near as clearly as it will be distracting for the examiners.

4 – Answer the question they ask not the one you’d prefer

This one is true whether it’s an oral exam or written paper, answer the question you are asked not the one you wish they’d asked. Now as part of your viva prep you will probably learn to answer some of the difficult ones like a politician, where you acknowledge the questions and then deflect to a strength when following up. This is different to just not answering the question. I’m so guilty of this one. I tend to be holding a conversation in my head at the same time as being in the room and so I will proceed to the next question in the conversation I’ve planned rather than listen to nuance of the one I’m actually being asked. I have to really force myself to be calm and really listen to the question. I always make sure I have water or something I can drink in the room and try to force myself to take a sip before I answer a question when I’m feeling stressed or nervous in order to stop me jumping in and make me focus on the question. Hearing the question can be especially tricky in a PhD viva when the questions may be long and multi-component. I took in a pad so that I could write down sections from multi-component questions (just words as prompts) so that I could try to ensure that I was answering everything that was asked of me.

Remember that in a PhD viva you are also able to take the lead in some of the discussion, this is your chance to really talk about your work after all, but it’s important that you bear in mind the point you are trying to make rather than meandering or going down rabbit holes. If you go off topic too much it can give your examiner doubts about your ability to prioritise key points, which can indicate a lack of thorough understanding.

5 – Don’t try to blag it

If you don’t know the answer please just say so, it’s OK. There is nothing worse than having someone try to pretend they know the answer or watching them actively make things up in a viva. Science is about the unknown and there will be numerous points in your working life where you don’t know the answer. If you try to blag it can indicate that you might not acknowledge key failings or points in your work/field you don’t know/understand, not just in your viva but in your practice. This can be a really big red flag and will mean your examiners push harder and dig more to uncover what other weaknesses may be present. It is perfectly fine to acknowledge that you are having a blank and would prefer to come back to a question later, or say that is not something you actually have a concrete answer for but you would consider X, Y, Z in finding an answer. Practice responding to questions you don’t have the answer to, it will stand you in good stead for conference questions and all kinds of other situations in the future.

6 – Give credit where its due

A lot of PhDs and other pieces of work contain sections where you supported rather than led. You may have had some statistics, bioinformatics, or sampling support. I’ve had a couple of (non examination) situations recently where instead of acknowledging this individuals have obfuscated the support they had. If this happens in an exam situation then it’s really concerning, if it comes out in an exam situation and has not been acknowledged in the thesis this is also really not good. It is OK to have work that has been co-created or even led by others, as long as this is well acknowledge and there is enough in your thesis that is unique or led by you. Again, hiding these other contributions makes your examiners question the level of your contribution and they will get the spades out to start digging. Science and medicine is a team sport, don’t be afraid to acknowledge that. Being able to work with others is a strength and not a weakness.

7 – Be prepared to talk about your why

Although PhD viva exams can feel like they are all about the data that’s not actually true. They are also about you as a person, not just the science. It is important therefore to be prepared to answer questions to help the examiners get to know more about you. What was it that made you want to do a PhD? What were your skills and interests when you started? What were your learning outcomes that you were aiming to complete by the time you finished?

A PhD is effectively an apprenticeship in research with the aim that you will become an independent researcher at the end. All that is about more than just data collection. What skills and techniques do you feel like you’ve picked up along the way? What other transferable skills have you learnt? Have you mentored masters students? Presented at conferences? Written papers? Have you undertaken any science communication or public engagement – what have you learnt? Which courses have you undertaken as part of your PhD? What networks have you become part of? What collaborations have you formed? Thinking and preparing to answer questions like this will give your examiners a much greater idea of where you came from and help to bench mark how far you’ve come.

8 – Prepare to talk about the future

The other thing that you should be prepared to talk about (after where you’ve come from) is where you are going to. A common question is ‘if money or resources were no object how would you change the work you have done so far and how would you plan the next steps for your project?’

You will have had plenty of time to reflect on the weaknesses of your work, this is the moment where you get to talk about how you would address those weaknesses by discussing what the next steps for your work could be. Practice both a realistic ‘I would put in a grant to X funding body to continue Y aspect of my work because….’ answer as well as a super ambitious version for if someone took away all of the resource limitations placed upon you.

You should also be prepared to talk about your plans for the future. Are you going to stay in academia? Are you interested in transferring to industry? Would you like to become a clinical academic? This a great way to help examiners understand why you may have made some of the choices of direction you’ve made linked to project, for instance taking a more clinical bent. It is also a good way to have a conversation that may help your thinking about where you want to be in 5 years and if you’re lucky gain advice from some very experienced people on next steps.

9 – Know we’re rooting for you

A lot of people go into the examination room thinking that it will be adversarial setting, the opposite should be true, we are rooting for you. Our job is to support you through the process to get the most out of both you and your work. Everyone understands that you will be nervous, everyone in that room has sat on the other side of the table, has sat in your shoes, they know therefore both how it feels and what it means.

Don’t be afraid to talk about challenges your have faced, in fact you will often be asked to talk about the biggest challenges within your project. It is important to think about what you want to discuss in response to this question: what was the challenge? how did you respond to it? what was the learning you took from it, both about yourself and the work? These questions are important for the examiner not just to understand what your progress to viva has involved but also how you think and respond. This is a great opportunity to talk about things that matter to you and to help the examiners get to know who you are as a scientist. By doing the work to prepare you are doing all you can to help your examiners achieve this. Stay open, stay engaged and stay hopeful.

10 – Keep calm and carry on

Finally, this is a big one. No matter what happens in that room know that it is rarely the end. For good or bad almost everyone comes out of that room with further work, with something more to do. That is very much part of the learning. A lot of people who haven’t done a PhD think that the viva is the end of the process, the big hooray, but I must admit it didn’t feel real to me until I stood at a graduation ceremony in my robes knowing it was truly done.

Whatever happens you will work out of that room with a whole bunch of concrete information that will allow you to put a bow on what will already be (probably) one of the best pieces of writing you will ever do. You will also have learnt more than you could dream in the process of prepping for the viva and during the event itself. You will come out of it as a stronger, better person who will have learnt so much about yourself and what you can really achieve when you put your mind to it.

So as much as any oral exam is terrifying, know that you will actually benefit so much from the process. It’s one of the few moments in your life where people will be forced to listen to you talk about a topic you will know more about than just about anyone in the world. Enjoy the captive audience and if you can try to be in the moment and make the most of the experience.

All opinions on this blog are my own

Guest Blog: Claire and Sam take over the Environment Network

September 9, 2022 girlymicro Education, Guest blog, Microbiology (Clinical), Research/Academia, Science Communication

Today is the Environment Network 2022 event: The Role of Surfaces and Surface Decontamination in Managing healthcare association infection (HCAI) and as @Girlymicro is busy running the show she has tagged in her willing PhD student Sam Watkin, and regular contributor Dr Claire Walker to live blog this event. Let’s get started #EN2022.

What Is the Environment Network?

The Environment Network works to support people in clinical, engineering and scientific roles who are interested in environmental infection control

Do you want to know more about what to do with your water screening and air sampling results? Are you keen to understand the evidence behind equipment cleaning and the role of the environment in healthcare associated infection?

Then welcome to the Environment Network! This is a network for people in clinical/scientific/engineering roles within the NHS and other associated organisations who are interested in the role of environmental infection prevention and control in preventing infection.

The aim of the network is to support infection prevention and control professionals involved in commissioning, environmental audit, water, air and surface testing within their Trusts. By working together we can share best practice between Trusts; as well as circulating the latest evidence and discussing personal experiences.

We are so excited to be live blogging the wonderful EN conference this year. Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green BEM opens the conference setting the scene for a wonderful day of networking, learning and discussions with our clinical, industry and academic colleagues. We’ve all come here today create a friendly network of experts. Because sometimes we all need to phone a friend at 4.30 on a Friday when everything is going wrong, and this is the perfect opportunity to grab every experts number.

Morning Presentation Session

The esteemed Professor Jean-Yves Maillard from Cardiff University leads us through his thoughts on options for surface clean and surface decontamination. This topic is very much at the forefront of our minds in the EN, and whilst there has been huge progress in hand hygiene (thanks COVID!), Prof Maillard’s fascinating talk demonstrates how many factors have to be considered to really make a surface ‘safe’. There are so many variables to consider; what product to use, how effective a product is, what factors impact on that efficacy and unique multifaceted challenges we face in this field particularly when it comes to training and developing best practice across healthcare specialisms.

He raised a very interesting and important point when thinking abut surface decontamination – how do you define a “safe” surface? Let’s talk about norovirus – when we consider that it takes 10 virus particles make you sick and there are one billion virus particles per gram of vomit or faeces – you best hope your cleaning strategy works or the whole cruise ship (or worse hospital ward) is going down. The difference between looking clean and being safe is shown, just because it looks shiny doesn’t mean that you can eat your dinner off it!

As we come to discussing decontamination chemicals, the focus turns to compliance with surface decontamination protocols which are essential in maintaining environmental decontamination efficacy. Prof Maillard raised fascinating points on how products are used and why this matters. Different delivery methods, such as spray, foam or pre-wetted wipes, have significant impacts on the efficacy of compounds and their proper use is often hard to consistently achieve.

Further complicating the issue, different microbes have different susceptibilities to different decontamination agents. Wipes that can remove a Gram-negative pathogen can do very little against a Gram-positive. We know that some key pathogenic organisms like Clostridioides difficile require higher levels of disinfection compared to others, but other pathogens often have different requirements to each other. Multidrug resistant organisms can often be resistant to quaternary ammonium compounds meaning you may be able to clean off antibiotic-sensitive Klebsiella, but the drug-resistant ones could remain. Similarly, despite some company claims to the contrary alcohol gel does nothing against C.difficile spores.

Prof Maillard detailed just how important this is by describing some shocking cases of where cleaning has gone wrong. The use of inappropriate compound concentrations and a lack of consistent training on new products can have truly terrifying consequences in the hospital environment. In untrained hands, cleaning can actually make the situation worse not better, for example poor cleaning with can spread viruses around a patients room rather than remove them. We all have so much to learn from not taking detail for granted and how basic precautions like ‘one wipe, one direction, bin it‘ can prevent healthcare associated infections.

As the talk comes to a close we ask can we trust claims of residual activity of decontamination products? Does it really leave a surface ‘clean’ and ‘safe’ for 48 hours? Do these products really work as well as companies or their representatives claim? Prof Maillard says we really can’t trust everything we read. A disinfectant used improperly can select for microorganisms resistant to that product. This highlights not only the importance of choosing the right disinfectant compound, but on using it correctly too. With pandemics in the press, it’s more important than ever that we have an open dialog and solid evidence base for what we use, how we use it and when to use it to create safe environments for both patients and staff.

In our second presentation of the day Karren Staniforth from UKHSA explains the role of novel decontamination techniques in healthcare

It’s important to acknowledge that in decontamination, one box does not fit all. A high risk patient post chemotherapy has very different requirements to a healthy adult popping to the GP to ask for a repeat prescription. Furthermore, we know can’t sterilize everything. It simply doesn’t work that way, so we need to be decontaminating to an appropriate level for the site. If we can avoid high-level sterilization we should as they are expensive, potentially damaging to the site and generally involve harmful chemicals. So how do we manage surfaces categorized as ‘low risk’? For those of us who aren’t so familiar with disinfection in the low risk setting this means something that comes into contact with intact skin. A huge number of different products are available but today Karren is are talking about UV light, and gases and vapours – why we might want to use them and how we might automate these systems.

Karren raises an important issue that automated decontamination techniques don’t remove human error, particularly as they generally require humans to set them up. We still need manual cleaning of rooms when using these, so they very much are there to support environmental cleaning and decontamination, not to replace manual decontamination. However, there are some incredible advantages to an automated system – not least that they are highly reproducible thus much easier to audit and, with proper calibration, should be highly precise and accurate.

Karren tells us why it is so important to use and understand what disinfectant efficacy really tells us, and why it is crucial to be sceptical and to question the manufacturers claims about their products. She details a fascinating history of working in infection prevention and control, and the journey from cleaned rooms actually causing MORE infections to introducing novel technologies and strategies that are proven efficacious. Her talk is peppered with wonderful real world experience of infection, prevention and control. Simple strategies like removal of felt notice boards from wards also had a huge impact in improving cleaning strategies to rid geriatric wards of C.difficile. As a member of the EN steering group (Claire), I am heartened to hear how sharing our stories can improve real world patient care.

Karren closes her talk with some fascinating points about cleaning frequency rather than specificity. We really need to thing about exactly what we are trying to achieve in each setting, and often a bespoke mixed-approach will be what fits the bill.

Post Coffee Talk Session

Claire has been let loose on her own now – with Sam giving his presentation next.

Revived by our coffee we move onto the much anticipated talk by our pal Sam who, with the knowledgeable Helen Rickard, is guiding us through monitoring microbial surface loads – how we should approach it in healthcare and some key findings from their exciting work. Monitoring let us pick up presence and movement of clinically relevant microorganisms in the hospital setting promoting surveillance and targeted treatment programs. This is done routinely in hospitals, but can be stepped up after an outbreak or when transmission is unexpected.

Sam gives us a step by step guide to the different samples and how you might process them to identify the microbial population present. His data demonstrate how important continual sampling is – just counts of microbial species are a snap shot of the situation, and when repeated sampling is done microbial persistence is revealed telling the whole story.

Helen Rickard walks us through why sink surfaces are so important in HCAI. Sinks are the perfect environment for microbes to thrive, and the presence of running water disperses and aerosolises bacteria. They are also often very close to patients. Helen is interested in the impact the patients will have on sink surfaces. Her exciting preliminary data reveals that numbers of organisms detected on sinks double when patients inhabit wards, and numbers of human commensals massively increase. We’re already excited for Helen to come back and tell us more when she is further along into her project.

Dr Marco-Felipe King from the University of Leeds is up next, telling us all about how one can model the impact of surface decontamination. Dr King’s work links airborne and surface contamination, looking at the impact of ventilation on surface contamination, and then transmission onto human fingers. We watch an incredible computer generated model depicting how viruses spread across a ward onto surfaces challenging the myth that viral particles don’t deposit on surfaces. Dr King’s enthusiasm for understanding microbial recontamination of surfaces (why microbial loads sometime increase after cleaning) is infectious. He showed several delightfully complicated formula to model these (and explained them very well!). In Dr King’s own words, “something funny is going on” with the data, which inspired lively discussion amongst all the delegates. He showed how much relative humidity matters for transferring organisms to hands when surfaces are touched – basically proving you should never lick your fingers when on the tube.

Dr Lena Ciric from University College London brings our morning session to a close with a fascinating talk all about the importance of surface loads, and how they differ in healthcare and the community.

Dr Ciric kicked her talk off by discussing the challenges of achieving low surface loadings in the healthcare setting, explaining that while we want microbially clean surfaces in hospital, we have evolved to live with microbes. She highlighted how few guidelines actually exist for surface loading levels, and the challenge this presents to standardisation. Dr Ciric’s data looked at colony forming units collected from a range of locations – hospital wards, the FA cup final, the Brits and even the Tube – to understand what a safe level of microorganisms on surfaces should be. Safe to say we are never touching a surface on the tube again. But it’s not simply a case of how much of something is there, we need to understand what microbial species are present. Her data on presence of SARS-CoV-2 presence showed that colony forming units (CFU) didn’t reflect how much SARS CoV-2 RNA was present on the tube, so whilst the CFU guidelines are interesting more work needs to be done. Really highlighting the importance of, in Dr Ciric’s own worlds, ‘you’ll find what you go looking for’!

Reflections on Surfaces

What an absolutely brilliant, informative and lively morning. It’s difficult to condense such a varied and thoughtful set of presentations into a few take home messages.

The importance of moving past the marketing – we really need to question how good products are, validate them for use and develop sound guidelines.
Human factors are hugely important – without proper training even the best tools are not helpful
The overall takeaway for the transfer of organisms to people’s hands: “it depends”

TLDR: @girlymicro let Claire and Sam loose on her blog, who had lots of fun but she should definitely have provided a word count.

All opinion on this blog is my own

Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Your K score and the uneasy relationship between science and science communication

August 12, 2022August 12, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, Healthcare Science, Microbiology (Clinical), Microbiology (Research), Research/Academia, Science Communication

I’ve talked previously about benchmarking and the pros and cons of trying to work out if you are doing OK by comparing yourself to others. As scientists we have a tendancy to look for evidence, in the form of numbers, to enable us to do this. In terms of research measures the main ones that I have heard of being used are the h-index (Hirsch index) and the i10-index. These numbers are not just used by us as individuals as marker of impact and progress but they are also used by promotion panels at universities and by external reviews as a marker of quality/excellence. The question is are they measuring the right things? More recently I heard of something completely new (to me), the K-index (Kardashian index) and finding out what it was about kind of blew my mind.

What are these measures?

The h-index is supposed to measure both productivity and impact. It’s calculated by using the number of papers published by an individual that have a minimum number of citations, for instance if you have a h-index score of 4 you have 4 papers that have at least 4 citations. You may have published 20 papers but they only count once they have reached the minimum citation score. The i10-index by comparison is the number of papers with a minimum of 10 citations, and so is a similar but simplified version.

As of August 2021 my scores for these benchmarks (as taken from Google Scholar) are:

I had on the other hand had never heard of the K score or Kardashian index until recently. The K-index is a measure of someone’s scientific productivity in relation to their social media score. It is determined by dividing the number of social media followers someone has on Twitter by the number of citations they have in peer reviewed publications. In my case (as of the 10th August) that would be 4939/703 = K-index of 7.03.

What’s in a number?

But what do any of these numbers actually mean. For the h-index a score of 20 for a scientist of 20 years experience is supposed to mean they are successful, 40 is outstanding and 60 is exceptional. Obviously these vary between disciplines, but as I haven’t reached my 20 years yet I’m OK with my 16. For the i10-index, only really used by Google Scholar, for a similar level of experience an i10-index of 25 is considered to be pretty good. Again, this varies between disciplines. It is also likely to differ between settings, as a Clinical Academic I am unlikely to achieve the same metrics as one of my academic colleagues, as I also hold a clinical role.

“I propose that all scientists calculate their own K-index on an annual basis and include it in their Twitter profile. Not only does this help others decide how much weight they should give to someone’s 140 character wisdom, it can also be an incentive – if your K-index gets above 5, then it’s time to get off Twitter and write those papers”
Hall, N (July 30, 2014). “The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists” (PDF). Genome Biology. 15 (7): 424.

What is it that my K-index means then? Well my K-index is above 5 and therefore apparently means I may have a higher following than my scientific research credentials indicate I deserve. If I had a low K-index (i.e. 1 or 2) it would suggest that perhaps my science was being undervalued. This was actually seen for a quite a few female scientists in this rather tongue in cheek study.

Just call me Khloe

So I am a Kardashian, it’s official! Now if I could also be given their pay packet and I also wouldn’t mind someone who would follow me around doing my hair and nails – although that might be a little weird on ward round.

In all seriousness there have been a number of things that struck me about this as a concept.

The idea that scientists only attract followers in order to share their own science, rather than to share and discuss science or to raise awareness of the profession
That all of these measures try to claim they measure impact but all they do is measure the equivalent of ‘shares’ by scientists to scientists and I would suggest that that isn’t actually a measure of impact – just a measure of how well you are surviving at publish or perish
The lack of perceived benefit from science communication undertaken by scientists in comparison to the requirement to produce new publications. This has been seen in a bias against women in the promotions process as they are usually disproportionately involved in activities such as outreach, which are not perceived to have equivalent value. Only ‘hard’ science counts

What does the existence of this metric tell us (even jokingly) about the relationship between science and science communication?

I am aware that the author of this paper said in 2022 that it was satire and a dig at the use of a metric indicators, but I think it goes deeper than that and sheds light on a much larger set of issues and attitudes.

I have been told my people that I both respect and who are very senior that I should do ‘less of my nonsense and focus on both my science and clinical skills’. The nonsense they were referring to is my education and outreach work, work like the Nosocomial Project. The impact of this work in terms of recruiting future scientists, about the democratisation of science, and impacts on decision making, definitely aren’t captured by the number of citations I have on Google Scholar.

I think these metrics also fail to capture things like translation into clinical practice, inclusion in guidance and use by groups who may not be publishing papers, and therefore are not citing your work, but have applied it to their setting. That is the reason that I publish, to support change, not to chase a h-index, and so these metrics represent only a very traditional view of academic impact.

As for the K-index, as far as I’m concerned my research is funded by the public, the results therefore are owned by that same public and there is an onus on me to share with then what their funding has paid for, discuss with them whether they actually feel it brings benefit and where it can be improved for those with lived experience. I think the time of academics living in an Ivory Tower and only communicating with each other should be over. Yes we need to talk to each other, collaborate and inspire each other, but that shouldn’t be as far as the conversation goes.

There is obviously a difference between being a science communicator and a scientist who communicates science. The JD’s and the skill sets are over lapping but different. That doesn’t mean that scientists shouldn’t be out there talking about science with the wider public. I feel very strongly that sites like twitter shouldn’t be a single sided conversation. I’m not just going to talk about my science, I want to discuss and amplify content produced by others. I want to have, sometimes challenging, discussions in order to show that science isn’t about absolutes.

Communication on social media is about so much more than the sharing of data. It is a way to develop networks, show support and amplify, as well as to communicate information that is real time and may not have gone through the academic peer review process, such as guidelines or funding calls. So maybe instead of putting scientists with a high K-index and low other scores into academic purgatory we should look at developing a different way to evaluate the modern version of what it is to be a scientist. A score that could capture all of the invaluable work a lot of academics do to ensure that there is a workforce of the future and to support scientific literacy and co-production beyond the Ivory Towers in which we live.

Anyway, apparently I’m off to the paper mines to prove my academic worth. I intend to continue to smuggle out tweets whilst the WiFi permits however, because as much as its lovely to talk to scientists and people like me, science is more valuable when it is truly shared and available to everyone.

All opinions on this blog are my own

The Second Year Slump: understanding the ups and downs of doing a PhD

July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, Microbiology (Research), Research/Academia

I loved my PhD, it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever had the privilege of doing in my career. It was also the start of my physical decline, the point at which I developed alopecia and started to have auto immune attacks. It was (next to FRCPath) the psychologically most challenging thing I’ve ever done. I don’t regret it for one second, but there are aspects of what it is like to do a PhD that I think I would have been better prepared for if someone had talked to me about them before I started. Now I supervise PhD students myself and I try to have some of the conversations with them that I wish that someone had had with me.

Completing any PhD is a roller coaster and crossing the finish line is a huge mile stone. There is a lot of road from the start to completion however. So today I wanted to talk about one topic in particular that if I had known about when I started would have meant, when it happened to me, I didn’t feel so alone, out if my depth and like a failure compared to my peers. I’m talking about the second year slump.

Now this post is going to focus on PhDs but a lot of the thinking about why this is challenging and hard can be applied to any form of long term project that is high stakes and mostly undertaken in isolation. There are probably points we can all take away for different aspects of our working lives

So what is the second year slump?

The second year slump is the time during the middle of your PhD when you feel like you’ve lost your way. It’s the time where most students have a massive crisis of confidence both linked to their own skills and whether they can ever complete, but also linked to the project itself and whether it will have value. It is a pretty dark and lonely time where everything feels really hard and very isolating.

A question of timing?

Why does it happen when it happens? The second year is that point in a project when you have been doing it for long enough to understand the scale of the project and are so firmly embedded in it that you see both all of the challenges and all of the faults. You are also still quite far away from seeing the finish line or having outputs that make you feel you are really achieving.

Now obviously the second year slump doesn’t always occur in the second year, when it happens depends somewhat on the time scale of your PhD, it may be later if you’re working part time. The thing is it has happened to every PhD student I’ve spoken to at some point and certainly to every PhD student I’ve ever supervised.

One of the difficult things about entering the middle stage of your PhD is that you are getting to the point where you will be actively comparing yourself against others. Am I doing OK? Am I working hard enough? Am I productive enough? The problem is that every single project is different, your learning needs as a student will also be different as everyone starts in a different place. Therefore comparing how you are doing against others is often a fools errand. To compound this you are often benchmarking against peers that are either super enthusiastic as they have just started, or against other peers who are getting outputs (papers/posters) and meeting their success criteria because they are further down the line. Very rarely do you have someone in exactly the same boat to truly compare against, and yet we are rarely told to not compare against others.

The road ahead is all starting to become very real

The other thing about the middle of any long term project is that you are too far away from the end to truly be able to conceptualise what that looks like, and far enough from the beginning that the true challenges of the task are becoming very real. Rather than being filled with lots of enthusiasm and just an idea that it is going to be challenging, you know know quite how challenging the path ahead will be.

At this stage it can often feel like no progress is being made. The increments are so small that you can’t fully judge the distance you have travelled and you are so fully focussed on what is in front of you that you forget quite how far you’ve come. One of the tricks that I’ve been thinking of doing with my new starters is to get them to write notes to themselves for 6, 12 and 18 months as with a reminder of where they are and what they hope to have achieved by that point. I hope that by doing this it will give them something concrete to reflect back on to truly understand their level of progress. Pairing students during the second year slump with new starters can also actually help at this point. As well as developing them as educators it can also stand to show them how much knowledge they have acquired since they were the new starter themselves.

‘Oh, everyone wants to know about me’

It is a truth universally acknowledge that you should never ask a PhD student how it is going. The main issue with this is, if you are anything like I was at this point, I had very little life outside of work and my PhD so I just didn’t have a lot of small talk that wasn’t about my project. The problem is (and I acknowledge the irony here) everyone has an opinion or some advice. People who haven’t done a PhD have nothing to really compare it against in terms of giving you the support you need. We also all know of those other PhD students who use discussion as a way of making themselves feel better by talking about how great they are doing, whereas in truth we know that they were actually doing no better than anyone else. This is often compounded by your supervisor who will have a 1001 different priorities and will be trying to strike a balance between pushing enough and (if you are lucky) caring enough about your health and wellbeing to not push too much.

During the second year slump it can be tricky to find anything positive to say. You can’t babble on about everyone you’ve just met or how great it is to start, you often have nothing concrete that people will understand (like papers and posters) to share, and in all honesty this phase of an experimental PhD is often just filled with a lot of failure which can be difficult to discuss for fear of judgement. These things can all make just simply answering the question ‘how is the PhD going?’ challenging.

Stepping into your future

Finally, and I know it doesn’t feel like it, this is the point at which you really are developing and learning most. You’re at the point where you are starting to take risks and explore what it’s like to do novel work, you are truly beginning to work as a scientist and that can be scary and require adjustment.

At the start of your PhD you will mostly be doing the ‘safe’ work. Learning techniques and building on work done by others, but not initially taking those next big leaps of thought that are required for you to develop your own work. During your second year you are usually going to be making your own intellectual leaps and so the consequence of that is that there is a lot of failure and trouble shooting as you try and work things out. As you really grow into undertaking work as an independent researcher, you make that shift into following up on your own thoughts and really take responsibility for planning your work. That responsibility and the fact that your success is intrinsically linked to how well you develop into this new role can be truly terrifying, but it’s rarely articulated. Most people think the adjustment happens in the first year, but in my experience it is definitely during the second year when this shift starts to occur.

So if you are feeling low and lonely in the middle of any project, know that it is not you, it’s probably a function of the type of work you are doing. Remember that this is hard and that’s OK as you are truly beginning to reach your potential and anything worth doing is not easy, so be kind to yourself. If you are a supervisor or other form of mentor, talk about this with your students that are coming on board, think of ways to make it easier. Last of all and for the love of all you hold dear, don’t as a second year PhD student if they’ve started on their thesis yet, unless you’re prepared to give them a LOT of tea, cake and sympathy.

All opinions on this blog are my own

Celebrating National Pathology Week: What is a clinical academic?

June 22, 2022June 22, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, Healthcare Science, Microbiology (Clinical), Microbiology (Research), Research/Academia

We are working through an exciting time within NHS careers, especially as Healthcare Scientists. Training pathways are becoming more formalised and alongside this diversity of opportunities are increasing, allowing Healthcare Scientists to have not only more options for their individual careers but also to increase the impact of this workforce across areas including academia, education, leadership, as well as clinical specialisms. Following on from this weeks Guest Blog by Dr Claire Walker discussing the transition from lab to lectern and life working as a Healthcare Scientist within the academic setting I thought I would write something on what it is like to be a Clinical Academic (CA), working with a foot in both camps.

So what is a clinical academic? I suspect that all of you who read this blog regularly will be able to picture my face when I googled and the top entry is the one below from the NHS Healthcare Careers webpage:

what is a clinical academic? – healthcare careers search response

I believe it’s pretty self evident that I am not a medical doctor and that although this description may once have been true it is far from telling the full story.

So what is a Clinical Academic?

Being a CA is not in fact based on profession, or even % time splits. It’s based on the role that is occupied. One of the big distinguishing features is that a CA holds roles both within a University and within a Healthcare organisation, usually one honorary position and another substantive. Throughout the lifetime of a CA career the substantive post may switch between being within healthcare or a University, its the maintenance of both that is probably the most CA universal theme.

The amount of lecturing vs research varies by individual. Most of the CAs I work with tend to be highly engaged with research, especially if they are mainly based in healthcare, as this provides them with funding to buy out their time. In roles where clinics are routine however this provides a buy out route in the other direction. Despite being more research than teaching focussed I still teach on a number of master and undergraduate courses, as well as speaking at conferences etc.

Some typical academic tasks include:

Grant applications
Publication writing
Public engagement
Research supervision
Data collection (in whatever field that might be)
Teaching
Peer review (grants, papers etc)
Conference presentations
Other writing: book chapters etc
Guidance and strategic inputting

What are the routes into clinical academia?

On the Healthcare Scientist career chart below there is a box for CA pathways, but to me it still feels a bit ‘to be developed’. This isn’t unique to Healthcare Science but provides particular issues for my colleagues in specialist laboratories, especially within the UKHSA as they don’t have such a clear progression route laid out for them. It currently doesn’t really capture the whole situation as many of us in the Consultant Clinical Scientist box will also hold CA responsibilities and so the pathways aren’t as split as they appear.

There are a variety of roles into CA careers, both formal and informal. There is a fairly specific skill set you need to develop:

PhD (usually a research PhD rather than a tought/professional doctorate)
Some form of teaching qualification (as determined by your university). Not required for existing post but usually required for new
Funding track record – as you need to demonstrate to your employer you can assure an income stream
Publication track record – needed both for funding and dissemination
These days an interest in public engagement/involvement doesn’t hurt

The most established formal route into a CA career is via the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and the Integrated Clinical Academic (ICA) programme.

This is a programme that provides skill development and funding support all the way through from taster sessions to funding support for you to run your own research group. I wrote an article about this route in 2016 for the ACB and not much has changed in terms of the benefits.

The NIHR schemes are great, they match your current salary and give both great training and consumables support. This does mean these schemes are highly competitive (20 – 40% success rate, depending on level) however these days you need a level of research track record (publications and funding) to even enter at Doctoral level – demonstrating a pre-existing commitment to a CA career.

What about the informal routes? As I said the skill sets required are pretty standard and so can be developed piecemeal rather than through a structured programme. It is possible to get funding to do both a PhD and a teaching qualification by going through other routes (I have a post linked to PhD funding coming). The other components, funding and publishing, you will get by applying for funding for the qualification based aspects and during your PhD, it just may take longer. That said the NIHR route is time consuming and far from guaranteed, so both routes require you to know why you want to become a CA and an understanding of the fact that getting there is not a 9 – 5 commitment.

Why do Clinical Academic careers matter?

So having said that it can be a challenging route to go down why should you put in the effort?

There are numerous reasons why CAs are essential in healthcare. Let’s start with individual patient benefits. Research, especially translational research, is key to providing the best possible patient care. If we want to provide cutting edge care then we need to be engaged in the research that is developing that care – from clinical trials to diagnostic development. Getting results that diagnose patients faster has great individual benefits for patients, as they get on the right treatment more rapidly. Being engaged with clinical trials means that patients may be offered treatment or management that would just not be open to them otherwise.

On a Trust scale research enables funding to support infrastructure or translation of new diagnostics/services that might just not be possible with normal budget constraints. I was recently the co-applicant on a grant which brought in over £500,000.00 of infrastructure funding, for both staff and equipment. This means that the initial financial burden of translating over something new is not placed on the NHS and the data to then support business cases for introduction can be collected with minimal financial impact. On a national scale this kind of funding also supports multi site projects which would be difficult to manage in any other way in order to support large scale changes within the healthcare system, meaning that the potential impact can be huge and provide wide scale change.

There are also so many benefits for you as an individual. My career and life changed the day I got my NIHR Doctoral Fellowship. It opened both my eyes and doors to paths that I could never have imagined. I wouldn’t be a Lead Healthcare Scientist now if it wasn’t for the NIHR. I’m not sure I would be a Consultant. I have travelled the world, given lectures to thousands of people, developed future CAs and been able to develop as a scientist and a leader thanks to the funding that was provided. Along the way I hope that I’ve also made a difference for patients both through being involved in national guidance and local change.

What does a day in the life of a clinical academic look like?

As with so many aspects of Healthcare Science no two CAs seems to be the same. The National School of Healthcare Science have a number of different profiles on their webpage which describe some of the different options.

For me my weeks are really varied, obviously for the last 2 years my clinical work has been a priority and so the academic side of my role has been less prominent. I’ve already talked about teaching but for instance this is what I will be doing this month:

Organising a specialist conference on Environmental Infection Prevention and Control
Reviewing papers for numerous journals
Reviewing a grant
Reviewing abstract submissions for a conference
Meeting with my PhD students
Editing a paper for submission
Meeting to review SOPs for a country wide clinical trial
Meeting to review data for an ongoing COVID-19 study
Meeting with the molecular team to talk about how we move our Gram negative typing forward
Carrying out an MSc viva
Attending 2 exam boards as an external examiner

As my clinical work is currently still pretty hard core a lot of this I’ll pick up for the moment in my own time. Also, none of it takes me as long as when I first started out and so it looks more overwhelming than it actually is – I hope you can see the variety however.

There is no getting around the fact that being a CA is not a 9 – 5 post however, managing grant and other deadlines on top of clinical work often requires some significant juggling skills, and in my case a very supportive husband. It’s not something I would advise that people strive for if they don’t love research, if they don’t have so many ideas that they just need to do something with them, it is not a tick box career. You also have to grow to be comfortable with failure, only ~20% of grants are successful, paper reviewer comments can be harsh and your confidence will take repeated knocks. Every time this happens though I get better at what I do, I find the learning and try to make sure I do it better next time #lifeislearning.

Despite it’s challenges being a CA brings me untold joy, it provides me with an outlet for creative thought and means that even though I spend most of my days in an office not a lab, I still feel like a scientist. I get to collaborate with the most amazing people who are at the forefront of their fields to make improvements for patients that would either not be possible or would take years any other way. For me it’s been something that has more than repaid my investment in time, energy and creativity. It’s taken me to places I would never have imagined, introduced me to people that my life is better for having met and provided me with experiences that I didn’t think would ever happen to someone as normal as me. So if you love learning new things, making life better for patients and are happy to spend your weekends in front of a laptop then a Clinical Academic career may be the career for you!

All opinions on this blog are my own

Conference Season Is Upon Us: Top tips for anyone who struggles with networking

May 2, 2022May 4, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, Education, Healthcare Science, Microbiology (Clinical), Microbiology (Research), Research/Academia

Firstly apologies, this post was supposed to go up before ECCMID as I was hoping it would help others attending. Work was just too full on and I didn’t have the headspace to get it written. As there are still a lot of events yet to come I’m hoping it will still prove useful however.

We all know how very important networking is, especially at conferences. So much of a career that makes a difference in science is based on who you know and who you collaborate with. The problem is making those connections and getting to know people, especially in the early part of your career, often requires taking the plunge and being the one to open a conversion with someone you’ve never met.

I have an amazing friend called Diane who is a wonder to behold in these setting. She happily goes up to talk to people who she’s never met and just starts talking to them with great enthusiasm. Shes fearless and draws the best out of those she engages with. If you are a Diane you probably need read no further. For me however, there is little worse than that moment when you enter a room at a meeting/event, get your cup of tea and survey the 100s of people before you. In this moment you know that really now is the time, you HAVE to find someone to talk to. How do you choose who? What on earth do you say that means you don’t come across as an idiot? The very thought of it gives me palpitations. So here are some things I’ve learnt that take some of the stress out of networking at conferences.

Find an in

There are some moments and set ups at conferences when it is easier to start a conversation than others. There is always the chance that the person next to you in an interesting session will strike up a conversation to help them process what they’ve heard but in general they will be doing the same as you, ducking into and out of sessions that trigger their fancy, meaning they will be you focused on what comes next not starting a chat.

I find however there are two key moments when people are available for the cold start up conversation.

The first is at food breaks/receptions. During these moments there will be people who are there solo and also looking to develop their networks. I find the best thing to do in these situations is to get there early. There are always a limited number of tables where people can put down drinks, if you can find one and hold a place then people will effectively come to you. If this fails and there are no tables, just being close to the source of the refreshments often does the same job. Food and drink are great removers of hierarchy and being somewhere visible means that those in a similar position to you will be able to see you and hopefully will head your way. Worst case you make some small talk to the group that comes to your table and you can politely extricate yourself if it all feels too weird by saying you’re popping to get another drink.

The other place where people will be desperate to speak to you is during poster sessions. So many people will be waiting at their posters for an hour in the desperate hope that someone will come and show an interest. This is often a great time to make connections/exchange contact details (see NB below) If you scope out the listing you will know you are speaking to people who are interested in the same kind of work as you. This can shortcut some of the small talk you might otherwise need to make. It also enables you to know whether you are making a connection with a peer or whether you are connecting with a potential mentor/future employer.

The other thing to think about prior to these conversations is what you can offer, what is your unique selling point?

Knowledge (technique, setting or organism)
Access (organism, patients, research equipment)
Support (mentorship, peer-peer)
Collaboration (shared goals, shared research, shared implementation)

NB one of my biggest tips for all of these situations is to make sure you have some business cards printed – even if you print them yourself – this means that you can have something easy to hand out or pin to posters if you want authors to get in touch

Find your tribe

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I’m a bit of a twitterholic (@girlymicro if we haven’t met). One of the many reasons that I’ve stuck with twitter since I initially signed up is that it has transformed my networking experiences. Twitter has offered me a way to circumvent the cold start up conversation by allowing me to find my tribe.

These days every conference/meeting has a hashtag. By following this hashtag you can find people who are interested in the same things as you, people who are in the same sessions or who even have shared connections. In many ways its an improved version of doing the poster walk. Not only does this give you a conversational in but also by tweeting yourself linked to the thread before you ever meet in person it allows you to have a low stakes initial introduction.

One of the things I also love about twitter is it enables me to find and arrange to meet up with people who I primarily know online in order to strengthen my networks by getting to know each other better. It also gives me the chance to arrange collaboration events, like podcast recordings, when we just happen to be in the same place for a limited time. Both of these can obviously be done by email but can be much easier to arrange when at an event when you suddenly have half an hour free. Especially at big conferences you could wander the halls for 4 days and not meet anyone you know, this way you can make the most of every second.

Take a study buddy

I absorb my learning best when I have someone to talk through my thoughts with. I have a couple of trusted study buddies that I will by preference attend events with. These guys help me get the most out of any event by:

Encouraging me to be braver – ask those questions I might talk myself out of, talk to that person that I should really try to connect with
Providing me with a sounding board for ideas when I’m in the moment
Enabling us to divide and conquer – there are often multiple sessions I want to be in at the same time, this way we can split up and meet at whichever session is actually proving most appropriate
Knowing me well enough to give me space when I need down time to re-energise
Crucially for me they are also there so I can feel safe from a health perspective if I have issues. They’ve helped me manage severe reactions, broken limbs etc and I trust them to get me where I need to be and give healthcare workers the right info if I need care

Mel and Lena have been my colleagues for years and they can not only get me out of a shame spiral if I do something stupid but also, by having them available to have conversations all together with new collaborators, we can make much more rapid progress on projects from the very start.

One of the other great things about going with a great study buddy is that you can also achieve other goals whilst at the conference. You can start to get papers drafted, do that research return or catch up about PhD students. If you do have supervision responsibilities whilst you’re away, as you have trainees with you, you can also share the load in terms of ensuring you have downtime. A lot of my most creative breakthroughs have happened with these guys whilst we’ve been away, surrounded both by new science and the time to reflect on how we could encorporate new thinking into our work.

Do some pre-work

I can get really insecure when going to high stakes meetings, like some of the ones I’ve been to at the House of Commons. I never really feel like I fit in and I have been known to hide in the bathrooms there until 5 minutes prior to an event start so I don’t have to face the ‘meet a stranger’ chit chat. In recent years I’ve learnt the value of doing some pre-work ahead of these meetings. This has taken different forms:

Reaching out on social media to see if any of my connections are attending
Approaching a professional body, especially if I’m on their guestlist, to find out who else they are sending so I can pre-arrange meeting at the session
Researching the event to look at speakers and attendance list (if available) so I can pre plan who I might want to speak to and what I could start a conversation with

In these events part of the value is in expanding your network and so really thinking about why you are going and what you hope to achieve is really worth it. Then you can match your elevator pitch (who you are, what you do and what you can offer) to your goals to help you achieve them.

Become the person others come to speak to

One of the things that has become lovely in recent years is that I’ve realised if you are presenting/organising/chairing people come to speak to you. This removes a whole lot of the stress of networking. As I mentioned above, people will often come to you even when you are presenting posters. Its always worth submitting work therefore to events you are attending, not only to get feedback on get science, but also to support you in developing your networks.

Even if you are not in a position to submit work then you should think about offering to support the organisation of events. Meetings are frequently looking for individuals who are happy to support the event organisation, both ahead of time and to do things like man the desks during the event itself. This will mean that you get to know other people who are supporting event delivery with you and give you an opportunity to network with delegates and speakers in a supported way. These connections can be transformative in terms of giving you further opportunities down the line.

Know your self and your limits

Most people assume I’m an extrovert when they meet me and I definitely have a lot of those traits. The things is, I can only manage networking for a fixed period of time. I’m good for a couple of meetings but then I need to retreat back into my bathroom office and answer some emails, otherwise I just feel progressively drained. The older I get the more I need my own space. This is usually fine but presents a real problem at places like conferences where I may need to be in full on extrovert mode for 16 hours a day. I find it exhausting.

One of the things that I’ve discovered about networking is that I therefore have to schedule it in a way that works for me. I can’t agree to go to lots of dinners on top of full day events, either from a health or a social resource point of view. I therefore pick the moments that work best for me and don’t over commit. This does mean I sometimes worry about missing out and not making the most of every opportunity but it also means that I put myself and my wellbeing first. It means that I don’t leave a conference unable to engage with work when I get back as I’ve already used up all my resources. Therefore my top piece of advice is to understand that networking is key but find a way to do it that works for you. Pick your key moments and do them well, rather than trying to be all things to all people.

All opinions on this blog are my own

Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science Day: A view from the Girly Side

February 11, 2022February 11, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, General, Microbiology (Clinical), Research/Academia, Science Communication

This topic means a lot to me. It wasn’t by accident that when, in 2012, I chose my twitter handle: I chose Girlymicro/Girlymicrobiologist. It has felt to me, since I started as a working scientist in 2004, that it was considered unprofessional to bring my whole self to work: to like pink and purple, to bake, to talk about science fiction and gaming. It was the start of the journey that I am still on, to show that we are better scientists when we bring our whole selves to work. Anything that acts as a barrier to that not only harms us as individuals, but also harms what we can achieve as a collective.

The Road Is Long
With Many a Winding Turn
That Leads Us to Who Knows Where…

You may not know this, but I started out as a zoologist. I adored it, I loved it, but there were no jobs in it. My undergraduate dissertation was on the ‘Demographics of Witchcraft Accusations from 1625 to 1715’. You may think that has nothing to do with what I do now but you’d be wrong. Studying human and animal behaviour helps me all the time in understanding some of the group decision-making that occurs in healthcare. The hours of my life spent learning how to undertake statistical modelling was not wasted. What I didn’t study a lot of was microbiology: I did a single module of microbiology during my whole degree.

I then went on to study not microbiology but the physics of biological interactions at surfaces as an MRes. This was where I learnt some microbiology and developed a love of applied science. When I started as a trainee Clinical Scientist, I had so much less experience of microbiology than any of the other more traditional trainees. I once asked why they hired me and the wonderful Dr Margaret Sillis, who acted as my mentor, responded ‘We can teach you microbiology, it’s much harder to teach you how to think’. I still think about that and the transferable skills I picked up by studying other disciplines still come in use all the time.

This trend of not following the standard path has continued. It’s why I ended up in Infection Prevention and Control rather than microbiology. Although the traditional paths are in some ways easier, as you will be able to walk the path that others have walked before you, don’t be afraid to wander the path untrodden if you think that it will be a more satisfying journey for you as an individual. You will learn so much along the way and open up new roads for others to follow.

Making the Invisible Visible

During the last 10 years, one of the things I’ve consciously decided to do is to be visible. In 2015 I was asked if I would be filmed for a project that the Royal Society of Biology were organising called ‘Biology: Changing the World’. For some years I had been told, by my lovely (male) boss, that I shouldn’t do media and shouldn’t be seen as ‘courting attention’ as it a) detracted from the work, and b) people were looking to make a story out of you. Don’t get me wrong, there is some truth to this. It also results in a fair amount of negative feedback, often from female colleagues, about grandstanding and attention seeking. You know what it also does, however: it hopefully means that when a girl in 20 years time is asked the question I’m asked in this video about what female scientist inspired her, there is a chance she will have a name. Not that I think I’m going to be that person. I’m not going to win a Noble Prize or have a Wkipedia page. I do, even today, remember very clearly the male science undergraduate who came and spoke to my primary school class about his job, I can be THAT girl. The one that someone meets up close and personal and shows that normal everyday women can work in science. That the door is open to them. I can shine a light and make the career path visible to those who might follow. So, next time you are invited to do that piece of outreach, that radio interview, that blog and your mind questions your worth, ask: if not me, then who? I promise you that the next person will not be more qualified than you, more worthy than you, more appropriate than you. So please say yes.

The Importance of Valuing Difference

The above point brings me onto something a bit trickier. I’ve been fortunate enough to win a number of awards for myself and with my wonderful team and partners for undertaking STEM engagement. Doing this work requires energy and time, both of which are frequently given on weekends and evenings. Or, in the case of today’s blog, annual leave. I feel a moral obligation to do this work as well as it being an important part of maintaining my registration to practice. The interesting thing is that it is frequently not viewed this way in either my clinical or academic environments. It is not seen as ‘work’ and I have on more than one occasion been told that if I was serious about my career progression I needed to ‘do less of that nonsense’. Sadly this isn’t a unique situation for me, but is something that many women in science face, especially in academia. In these areas women spend a greater proportion of their time undertaking public engagement and utilising ‘soft skills’, which are not valued when it comes to promotion panels.

Over time I believe I have started to change perspectives, but it takes even more work and investment in time. I’ve taken on additional positions, such as Joint Trust Lead Healthcare Scientist. This position has enabled me to speak to senior leaders about the benefits of the work in order to raise awareness and to capture impact. By actively working with wonderful colleagues on projects nominated for awards, such as the Advancing Healthcare Award for Reach Out for Healthcare Science, with Dr Philippa May, and with Nicola Baldwin for the Antibiotic Guardian Awards and CSO Awards for Nosocomial, I have started to make inroads into changing the conversation. Awards aren’t everything, but they do support you in re-positioning what you are doing in a way that fits into the ‘traditional way’ success is captured.

Whilst I’m on this particular topic, I would also like to make one of the points I often respond with when talking to colleagues who aren’t so engaged in public engagement and outreach. The days of healthcare workers being considered to be ‘the authority’ are quite rightly coming to an end. Those of us working in healthcare need to be engaging and working collaboratively with patients and the public to co-create what the future of healthcare might be and should look like. We can’t begin this work until we get out there and start having conversations. Rather than being ‘nonsense’, this work is key to future of the NHS and, especially, Healthcare Science.

“Amplification” is Where It’s At

During the Obama administration, despite it’s progressive nature, women found it hard to get their voices heard.

We’ve all been there. The meetings in which you make a comment or a response and you’re ignored, only for a man in the room to repeat the comment and have everyone react as if it is the first time they’ve heard it. As women in science, we are often the only women in the room and so making ourselves heard can be difficult.

The women in the Obama administration came up with an “amplification” strategy, where women in meetings repeated each other’s ideas as well as deliberately crediting the women who came up with them.

I work with some amazing women in Healthcare Science (Jane Freeman, Anna Barnes, Ruth Thomsen, Kerrie Davies and so many more) who do an excellent job of this amplification. I’d like to think that we all have a definite and deliberate attitude of amplifying each others voices and not falling into the trap (that happens way too often) of competing with each other. Be deliberate when you are in spaces with other women who may not be heard, actively listen and repeat. Focus on those moments that could make a difference and ensure that everyone in the room is heard. It requires active effort, but it definitely changes the course of conversations.

So how our male colleagues can help? This is definitely one of those areas. There are often not the women in the room to do this and so having allies who are happy to support in the same way is a definite help.

Change the View for One That is More Pleasing

One day the super-inspirational Dr Lena Ciric and I sat down over a cup of coffee and engaged in one of our regular consolation sessions. This was because, yet again, I had written a grant that had been successfully funded but it didn’t have my name on it. It had the name of one of my male professors. Lena had experienced similar things over the years and also the reviewers’ response of ‘not enough experience’ as a result of grant after grant that didn’t credit us. This cup of coffee was different: it was during this session we decided that, if we couldn’t change the playing field, we could change the view.

What do I mean by this? Academically, we were applying for funding within the clinical microbiology environment. A landscape that was already filled with vastly experienced and (mostly) older male medics. We were not going to succeed in breaking through the glass ceiling by applying within this space. Life lesson: we needed to find another space. So we very deliberately looked across the different funders to see where there was a landscape that wasn’t crowded with people like us and where we could constructively add something. We found it. We ended up putting in our first million pound grant to the EPSRC, an engineering research council who were looking to fund healthcare research and were not getting applications from researchers with enough clinical experience. We got the grant first time! Now we had a million pound grant AND we had the track record that means we can not only continue to apply in the new landscape but that also enables us to apply in the old arena.

Sometimes, if you continue to bang your fist against a closed door all you will get is a bloody fist. In these circumstances you need to take a step back and review whether there is another way to get to where you want to be. If there is, do it, you may not only succeed in your original goal but learn some other valuable skills along the way.

Finally, I wanted to finish with the above image of Shonda Rhimes. I am as guilty as the next person of talking about how lucky and fortunate I am, and it is true. That said, own your success: you’ve earned it, you’ve put in the hours, you’ve sacrificed, you’ve made it happen whilst balancing families, health issues and all kinds of other demands.

Be the badass I know you are!

All views in this blog are my own

Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science Day: A view from the Girly Side

February 11, 2022February 11, 2022 girlymicro Academic Life, General, Microbiology (Clinical), Research/Academia, Science Communication

I’ve been asked to write a number of blog posts this year for International Day of Women and Girls in Science. I wanted to write an extra one that wasn’t so much a career guidance document, but more to celebrate some of the great approaches I have seen as a woman working in science. This post is based around some of the points that came out of a twitter conversation last week.

The Road Is Long
With Many a Winding Turn
That Leads Us to Who Knows Where…