I’m currently a little over halfway through my Biomedical Sciences Placement, and therefore my degree – scary!
My placement, situated between years 2 and 3, is a year-long one in Histopathology at Dewsbury and District Hospital.
For those of you who have no idea what histopathology is, it’s one of the five pathology disciplines – Biochemistry, Transfusion and Blood Sciences, Microbiology, Histology and Cytology. Histology looks at the tissues that make up the organs.
Ever wondered what happened to your appendix or a mole after you had them removed? We get them in histology! We check everything is ok, that nothing is cancerous, and report back to the doctors. We check the reason you had your appendix removed was appendicitis and not some gross horrible disease.
I knew I wanted to do a placement from the word go. There were so many positives, a whole year working in a lab, I’d be in my element! The main objective of doing my placement is to complete a Registration Portfolio which enables me to use the title Biomedical Scientist once I’ve graduated. So by doing the placement I’d be able to walk out of my degree and into a job.
That’s the plan anyway.
I never thought about the negatives until I realised how much I miss my friends and our impromptu chats, and the fact that the majority of them will graduate soon. However if you ever get the chance to do a placement, grab it with both hands. I was so determined that I wanted to do a placement that I took one in one of the disciplines I didn’t like that much.
I never understood the lectures and had to work much harder to get the same grades in that module than all the others. Having said that, the work itself is nothing like the lectures. I really enjoy it, I’m actually good at it (unlike the module at uni) and I think I’ve found something I’d be happy doing for the rest of my life.
My advice? Good things are worth fighting for, and life is far better than lectures.
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