IBMS members inspire Edinburgh’s youth
IBMS members Tamara Hanson MIBMS and Elizabeth Semple LIBMS joined other professionals to promote careers at Skills Scotland Edinburgh’s careers event.
Held on 8 November at the Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh, the event aimed to educate Edinburgh’s youth about possible future careers and opportunities. By letting young people come face-to-face with employers and professionals, students learned about the careers open to them.
Tamara Hanson reported:
“At the event, everyone can try different activities that will give them a taste of skills and challenges that young people will meet in a range of careers. Our stall had a glimpse and tasters of what it is like for a day in the life of a ‘Biomedical scientist in Blood Sciences’.
Many busloads of youngsters arrived. Fifty-six schools attended which is more than 600 people! We managed to attract and engage lots of people to the stall and therefore introduce our profession and hand out the IBMS leaflets and career information on becoming a biomedical scientist in the various disciplines.
For our activities, we had a DIY blood model where students had to guess what is in the jar and learn about what is in just one drop of blood. We discussed the components of the blood and what they look like in comparison to one another and their functionality.
Our microscope activity was a big hit with the students. They got to see malarial parasites’ blood films to identify ‘plasmodium vivax’ and draw what they saw down the microscope. Our pipette practise demonstration was popular as well. Here we offered numerous pipettes for the students to practise pipetting different volumes of liquid solution.
Tamara concluded,
Lastly, we had a chromatography experiment, where my colleague Elizabeth mocked a standard operating procedure with the aim to identify different coloured ink found in a coloured felt-tip pen. It was a chromatography practical on the ‘science of separation’.
We won a prize for the best interactive stall and we received a bottle of prosecco and chocolates. I am going to organise a raffle to raise funds for Harvey Gang charity. In August this year, our laboratory at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children started Harvey Gang tours.
All in all, it was exhausting but fun! I hope we were successful in inspiring and recruiting some youngsters about a possible future career into the laboratories in our wonderful ‘hidden’ profession.”
Are you signed up for an event to showcase science? IBMS members can request free promotional items online from our website, or non-members can download free posters and leaflets. If you’re just starting out, see our website and learn more about public engagement and how you can get involved.