Specialisms – STP Perspectives

What is Clinical Immunology?

Hello, I’m Helen and I’m a second year STP in Clinical Immunology. I work with University Hospitals Sussex and so get to work across a few of our hospitals (but mainly based in Brighton). Clinical Immunology is part of the blood sciences group which works closely with Biochemistry, Haematology and Genomics specialties. It’s an area that varies a lot depending on the hospital you are training in but there are four main areas that we test:

Autoimmunity – eg. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), Celiac disease, Rheumatoid arthritis
Immunodeficiency – eg. Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA), Chronic Granulomatous Disease (CGD)
Allergy – eg. Anaphylaxis, Oral Allergy Syndrome, Drug allergies
Haematological Oncology – eg. Chronic Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, Multiple Myeloma

3D Printing in Radiotherapy

Hi, I’m Hannah (one of the co-editors!) and I’m in my first year of Route 2 training to become a Clinical Scientist in Radiotherapy Physics in Belfast, Northern Ireland!

My training is a little different from the STP. I already have an MSc and I’m primarily completing clinical training to build a portfolio that demonstrates equivalence to the training done through the STP! I will hopefully be sharing more about Route 2 training on this blog, sharing alternative routes to Clinical Scientist registration and providing a platform for other Route 2 trainees to connect!

3D printing in Radiotherapy really interests me and that’s why I’ve chosen to focus on it. It’s also an area that has been gaining momentum in the world of radiotherapy research in recent years.

My Journey onto the STP: Past, Present and Future

Hi, my name’s Mary and I am a first-year Medical Physics trainee in North London. Looking back to when I first started my undergraduate degree, I didn’t even know this career path existed (thanks to the second-year careers module for introducing me!), let alone that in nearly six years I would have just completed my first rotation on the STP. I’m hoping this piece will showcase the range of applicable experiences and highlight the different routes to the STP (and show the fascinating world of Medical Physics!), just as the posts on STP Perspectives helped guide my STP application and working practices today.

My MSc Project: Medical Physics

Hello, my name is Rachael and I’m a Medical Physics STP based in Oxford. I started the STP back in September 2020 after studying Mathematics and Physics BSc at the University of Manchester. My specialism is imaging with ionising radiation which is a mix of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine on the current curriculum.

The Source (or Seed) of Hope for Cancer Patients – Brachytherapy

Hi! I’m Kieran and I’m a 3^rd year Trainee Clinical Scientist specialising in Radiotherapy Physics at Oxford University Hospitals (OUH). Unlike most trainees, I did not choose Radiotherapy (RT) at the end of my first year nor apply for a Radiotherapy specialism STP post. Originally, I had secured a post in Imaging with Ionising Radiation. After my radiotherapy rotation (my first one), I was enthralled by the wide variety of work, large clinical impact (and not to mention high dose!) of radiotherapy and inquired as to switching specialisms. Fortunately, I was able to switch – bear in mind this is not common practice but might be feasible if you desired to switch.

I would like to highlight an aspect of radiotherapy that is not as well-known. If I mention my work in radiotherapy to people, there is usually one of three reactions:

What’s that?
Oh, is that like a radiologist?
Shooting radiation at cancer with a big machine

While answers 1 and 2 are common and 3 is a large part of what we do – external beam radiotherapy – there are other methods of radiation delivery such as molecular radiotherapy and…

Brachytherapy

The transition from teaching to rehab engineering and how I got the role

How did I get here? I graduated from the PGCE in Secondary Science, specialising in Physics around June 2020. This was a hard time to be learning to teach when schools had shut up shop and gone online, and even harder to find work afterwards. In December 2020 I finally landed a teaching gig as a 6-month maternity cover for a physics teacher starting in January of 2021. However, it was never meant to be, with covid rates rising and the new Alpha variant rampaging, I was informed that the school was going back to online learning and my services weren’t needed. This was a particularly difficult period for me and many others struggling through the pandemic. This, along with the absence of engineering design and development opportunities, steered me towards looking for interesting and new opportunities I hadn’t considered, one of which was the (not very well advertised) Scientist Training Programme. The programme offered me a combination of everything that I had enjoyed about my previous employment and degrees, combining people-facing work and engineering at the same time.

Nurturing Life in the Laboratory: The Embryologist’s Perspective

The journey of the embryo during its first week of development

Since the beginning of life, the evolution of gametes produced one big and immotile gamete, the egg. It also produced one small and highly specialised motile cell, the sperm. In humans, the ampulla in the female reproductive tract is where magic happens (Figure 1 and 2).

**Figure 1.** Natural embryo development in the female reproductive tract. Taken from Carroll, 2018.

**Figure 2**. Time-lapse imaging of embryo development *in vitro* (the embryo has good quality; the velocity of the video was increased).

Bioinformatics: It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s magic?

What is bioinformatics?

Good question. Let’s start off with some definitions:

STP Specialisms | Andrology

Hi, my name is George and I’m a second year Andrology trainee at the Shropshire and Mid Wales Fertility Centre. Andrology is a relatively new specialism so there aren’t currently many trainees or fully qualified Andrologists, and it may not be as well-known as other specialities, so hopefully I can give a bit of an insight into what the role involves!

What is Andrology?

Andrology is the branch of science relating to male reproductive health, so the clinical scientist role covers working with male patients struggling with infertility, preserving male fertility for those who may become infertile in the future, and dealing with sperm donation, which is a vital resource for those who cannot produce or use their own sperm. It is a varied role, so tasks may be different from day-to-day and different clinics may place difference emphasis on each of the areas within the field depending on their clinical workload.

STP Specialisms – Embryology

What is Embryology as a clinical field?

Fertility treatment has been an established medical specialism for over four decades, yet many people are unaware of what it entails, and the role clinical and non-clinical staff play. An IVF clinic combines the skill sets of consultants, specialist nurses, and scientists to assist couples trying to conceive. The latter is where I come in. Hi! My name is Laurie-Anne, and I am a second-year Embryology trainee (Reproductive Science) at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. I’m going to show you what a day in the life of an Embryologist is like and how we contribute to fertility treatment.