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My name is pronounced ‘Fern’, like the plant or Fearne Cotton. It’s Chinese, because my mum’s family are Malaysian Chinese, and most still live in Malaysia.

You might be surprised that there are lots of scientists working for the NHS, not just doctors, nurses etc!  There are actually over 50,000 of us! About 80% of all decisions that doctors make have had some involvement from NHS scientists.

In my area, Radiotherapy Physics, we use beams of high energy radiation (photon, electron or proton particles) to treat people with cancer tumours. Doctors and radiographers are very skilled and knowledgeable, but they still need medical physicists to help them out as we’re the experts on high-energy particles and how they interact.

I’m still in training, but once I’m qualified my job has 3 main areas – External Beam Radiotherapy, Brachytherapy, and machines.

In External Beam Radiotherapy, beams of radiation particles are sent from outside the patient in towards the tumour. The high-energy particles interact with – and causes damage to – all the tissue they pass though. Damage to the tumour is good, but damage to the surrounding healthy tissue is obviously not! So, we use multiple beams of radiation from multiple different angles, to try to spread out this damage to healthy tissue. Working out what beams to use (plus what particle energies, what shielding to put in the way to protect healthy tissue, etc etc) is called ‘treatment planning’ – and this is what the Radiotherapy Physicist does!

Secondly, Brachytherapy. I think this is a really cool area. We insert plastic tubes into the tumour, move a tiny seed of radioactive material into each tube in turn, and hold it at different positions along the tube for a few minutes. The radioactive seed continuously emits high-energy photon particles. Because the seed is inside the tumour,  the photons cause lots of damage to the tumour and not much damage to the healthy tissue! ‘Brachy’ actually means ‘short’ in Greek, and brachytherapy is treating the tumour from a short distance.

Thirdly, we look after the treatment machines to make sure they’re working as they should, alongside the Engineering staff.

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If you wanted to become a healthcare scientist, the main route in is the NHS Scientist Training Programme (STP). There are about 30 different streams for all sorts of different scientific areas. About 4 are Physics related, plus some Engineering ones. I’m in my 2nd year on the STP in Radiotherapy Physics.

After a science degree, you follow a 3 year training programme with a part-time Masters degree in Clinical Science. Most of the 3 years is based at a hospital, with about 12 weeks of university lectures over years 1-2.  So far, I’ve found that a really good balance – learning things in theory at university and seeing them practically in a hospital. After completing the STP, you’re a fully qualified Clinical Scientist! Most people carry on working for the NHS, but there are plenty of other employers in clinical science too.

There are other ways to become an NHS scientist, e.g. there are some ‘apprenticeship’ type jobs, where you don’t need a degree, and you learn on the job instead.