Profile

I live with my husband and 3 children aged 6, 8 and 11 in Swansea. We have a cat called Mali, a Guinea pig called Panda and a shrimp which we grew from an egg in a tank. I work part time (70% of full time) and the rest of the time I seem to spend just rushing around generally…

I work in a hospital lab which diagnoses infections that patients have. We receive samples (like blood, urine or poo) and work out which tests to do on them to look for signs of infection. Often we grow the bacteria on agar jelly, and see which antibiotics can kill them. We also give advice on antibiotic treatment and how to prevent infections spreading in hospital and in the community.

As part of  my job I also plan medical student teaching on infection and do research into a tummy bug called Cryptosporidium, which causes diarrhoea.

I have two parts to my job, one in the hospital and one in the university. In the hospital, every day we review lab results, checking they are correct before sending them out to the wards or GPs. The mornings tend to be quieter as the lab results are not finished for us to review so we try and organise any meetings and other work for the mornings. The afternoons are really busy as the results are ready to go out and more people start ringing us to discuss their patients. If there are really important results meaning a patient is seriously ill we ring up their doctor directly to tell them the results in person and discuss what to do. We go on ward rounds on intensive care to check people are on the right antibiotics, and also try to prevent unnecessary antibiotic use. We take phone calls from other doctors and give advice on how to diagnose and treat patients. If there is an outbreak of infection in our patch we help investigate it and hopefully stop it.