We’ve now got a full complement of lead healthcare scientists (HCSs), covering all the major areas: Jude Skipper, physiological sciences; Liz Crees, medical physics and engineering; and Funmi Akinlade, pathology.

Jude and Liz started their joint post in March this year after their appointments were announced during our Healthcare Science Week, held just as the Covid-19 pandemic began to escalate.

Both were passionate about finding a third colleague to share the role, bringing a pathology viewpoint, however, the pandemic meant their plans had to be placed on hold for a while. Now Funmi has joined them, all three are passionate to move forward their agenda of raising the profile of healthcare science.

Jude, Head of Cardio-Respiratory Diagnostics, said: “There are more than 55 professions across healthcare science and while I know a lot about physiology, I don’t know much about the other branches of healthcare science. Which is why we thought it was really important that this was a joint post where we could cover all the main areas.

“If not, there’s a risk we may be unconsciously biased to those we are most familiar with.”

Funmi, consultant clinical biochemist, added: “I hadn’t met Liz and Jude until I attended a network meeting, which demonstrates just how wide healthcare science is across our Trust. By coming together we have a really good opportunity to help one another. By working together and learning from each other, teams across our Trust will really be able to benefit.”

The purpose of setting up our Healthcare Science network was to raise the profile of these professions and bring scientists across our Trust together to share knowledge and expertise. Now it’s full steam ahead for our leads, one of their keys tasks will be identifying fellow HCSs.

Liz, Head of Radiotherapy Physics, said: “We want to identify our HCSs, from all areas and of all bands, so we can communicate with them properly. It’s also really important that we ask them what their priorities are, and what areas they think we should be looking at.

“We plan to put together a healthcare science strategy for our Trust, which will take into account how we can best utilise our skills and provide career progression.”

Pictured above l-r are Jude, Liz and Funmi