Science in Healthcare Lecture Enjoyed by Pupils, Parents and Staff

Thursday, 26 September 2013

GCSE and A level students, their parents, staff and friends of the School enjoyed a fascinating insight into the work of a Medical Physicist. Dr Heather Williams, a Senior Medical Physicist for Nuclear Medicine at Central Manchester University Hospitals and Honorary Lecturer in the Centre for Imaging Sciences at Manchester University, outlined the contribution of clinical scientists to healthcare and the work of medical physicists, like herself.

Dr Williams revealed that there are 55,000 healthcare scientists working in the NHS, which is the largest number of people working in a single employment sector in the UK.  Of these, 3,500 are Medical Physicists who are primarily charged with looking after medical equipment, including scanners, x-ray and ultrasound machines. In this engaging lecture, the audience were offered a privileged insight into Nuclear Medicine and the treating of disease by high doses of x-ray or particle radiation as they were invited to “guess the part” as Dr Williams passed around parts of scanning machines.