Biomedical Science and the useless degree in reality

Hi. I just noticed that you have started reading up on IR35. There is some more information available including a set of FAQs specifically for healthcare professionals who locum in the NHS on the Medacs Healthcare website. If you search for “Medacs Healthcare and IR35” the pages will appear at the top of the search results.

Full disclaimer: I do work for Medacs Healthcare and the answers formed part of a research article I did for them. Visit the Medacs Healthcare site to read the full IR35 article.

Hiya everyone,

I am a biomedical science graduate (2008) and have always wanted to share my experience but forum threads I have come across have gone cold. This one is still alive, we can thank the trolls for that ☺

I will expand on my advice in the coming weeks as I am a little busy atm. My first nugget of wisdom is this:

Do not worry about IBMS accreditation, it doesn't mean much as if you want to work in a medical diagnostic laboratory it is the HCPC (state regulator) you need to please.

IBMS and HCPC courses do not overlap. The IBMS degrees join up with trainee bms positions, which are like hens teeth!

HCPC courses are integrated/co-terminus. This means, at the end you get state registration which Is what matters to work in this field. So do a course search on the hcpc website and choose those exact programs. They tend to be from former polytechnics rather than the older universities.

If you do not, it is possible to become a bms but much bureauratically difficult. Portfolio, top up, work experience etc.

More info to follow

For non-IBMS courses you need top up.

To determine which modules you need you need to pay ibms to evaluate your degree which they will with certainty decide to be deficient in some way.

I think the OP did this and got upset with the IBMS. Do not be surprised if they want you to do what amounts to 1 year or more of modules.

A colleague in a similar position did top up modules with the university of ulster via distance learning (ie. Study at home in your spare time).

However even if you do all of this you still need to complete the IBMS certificate of competence (aka training portfolio). Which from experience is either given to people who can afford to work for free ( large teaching hospital south of the river)
or
Get a job as a medical laboratory assistant/ technical officer/ associate practioner then beg your line manager to support a ibms portfolio application.

Chances are you will have to join a queue. Also you should be good at your job as they don't want to waste time and money on you

can the degree student if doing a generic portfolio in histology, do a specialist portfolio in transfusion? or does it have to be in the same field for bothe generic and specialist.

If you get registered with the HCPC as a scientist you have made it into the club. What you do after that is completely up to you.

The jump from histology to transfusion is quite a big one but you wouldn't necessarily need a specialist diploma to get in. It might count against you but only if the other candidates are strong.

Say you have a trainee BMS job offer in histology. Take it, get registered then worry about the rest later. Make contacts in the lab you would like to work for as I doubt your histology lab exists in isolation and will certainly cooperate with other disciplines- if they do trephine biopsies there will be some crosstalk with haematology. Just get chatting to people at the same time don't burn your bridges.

You are in a much better position to change at the band 5 level. Once you get a few years under your belt you might be offered promotion, in which case you will likely step down a grade at the same time as stepping sideways if you do switch disciplines.

Histology to BT I think is the most extreme example you could present. Chemistry, haematology, immunology overlap a lot and there is a general move to have "blood sciences" departments which cover all 3 at once.

Histology will have subdivisions but in general (I have no first hand experience, so please correct me if I am wrong) you are the doctors' lackey. You do all the running around: embedding, slicing, staining and mount. Then the pathologist takes over to interpret what is seen. If you are doing gynae cytology you get to find the dodgy ones to forward to the pathologist.

There is a move to have advanced scientist readers but I don't know the precise details. It will certainly involve some form of additional study. The NHS should be all over it like a rash as the scientist will be significantly cheaper than the doctor to both train and employ.

In short don't get to worried about specialist. You will only be able to do it once you are established in whatever field you join. Also it's really just a funny little cub scout badge line managers might use to limit promotion. If you have the opportunity, do a MSc this means something to everyone, inside the lab and out. It is expectation that any manager or supervisor should have a masters. This is hard and fast in NHS, private sector makes it up as they go along.

i think that makes sense. because one needs to have registration experience in the field one is trying to specialize. i know one person who has done microbiology trainee and then shifted to chemistry. but had to do one year extra as had no experience in chemistry before. but its rare.usually people tend to stay in the field they are in,. but thank you very useful info.

i think that makes sense. because one needs to have registration experience in the field one is trying to specialize. i know one person who has done microbiology trainee and then shifted to chemistry. but had to do one year extra as had no experience in chemistry before. but its rare.usually people tend to stay in the field they are in,. but thank you very useful info.

One year extra as what? As a trainee? A lower grade? Sounds like he (or she) didn't like the poo and managed to transfer somehow?

How much training do you need to see the QCs are in or not. It's feeding machines. The fine detail of chemistry is picked up as you go along - as long as you know your basics that is.

Micro is fascinating, and turnarounds are measured in days not 4 hours or less. I love how they smell the cultures and make a good approximate of the species growing, dying art as maldi is doing the nose work. I'm sure they don't type purely on how it smells.

Dear students

dont take biomedical science as a career for life as it is not worth it. this is my opinion only. the job market is saturated. please see this email below.

Attention: Chief Executive, IBMS

My name is Daniel and this email is about my genuine concern about pathology and its future along with the growing, frustrating community of students in biomedical science and related degrees who are unable to get a job in this field or are stuck in a particular liminal space in the pathology job profession. Part 1 of this email is my personal plea. Part 2 is my opinion about a growing issue about jobs/NHS pathology/Biomedical Science(BMS) degrees/universities/future of pathology and its genuine concerns.

I'm just coming to the end of my BMS degree now, and I'm beyond pissed off with it, I'm actually considering suing the university. I chose my university despite being able to attend more prestigious ones with my grades because they offered the healthcare science route and I could come out of my degree with my IBMS and HCPC certifications and work experience to go with it. During the open day they told me they'd never had a student fail to get a placement.

Once I was halfway though the first semester they announced the Health Care Science PTP placements, and informed us there'd be 7 to go around 140 students. I applied anyway and managed to get a position which was under the proviso that you don't fail anything. I continued on with the first year and worked six weeks during the holidays on my placement. One of our first year tutors deferred half of the student body for missing a "critical lab" which was only marked critical on the non-digital timetables we were told not to use. I submitted my deferred work (a poster) anyway and at the end of my placement they told me I had a score of 39, which I assumed couldn't be right because I was scoring straight firsts for everything else including the written work the poster was based on. Anyway, I was made to jump though a million hoops with my course lead asking me to make appeals he knew were impossible, all the while refusing to even look at the work. Eventually I was told I couldn't attend placement, there was some back and forth with him changing his mind at least twice with the hospital before he actually checked my work. Turns out it was graded wrongly all along, so they fixed it, but by that point the hospital was sick of my course lead messing them around and just outright refused to take me back.

Fast forward to third year and I can't find any jobs in the NHS within the field that don't require HCPC registration, there are no training posts countrywide to get the registration, so I now have no chance of getting the job I want. The field is oversaturated to the point where claiming you can get a job in the field after the degree should be considered outright fraud. I've considered looking at a masters and PhD but from what I've read even that's horrendously over subscribed. My university has posters plastered all over the place claiming a 80% of students in work or further education 6 months after they graduate, but I guess they wouldn't tell you if they were all flipping burgers. In short if anyone is reading this in 2017 avoid biomedical science there are no prospects at the end of it that wouldn't be equally served by any other degree.

I am really sorry to hear that your career prospects have been ruined by your course lead. It seems that the tutors are using unspeakably dreadful methods to get people out of the BMS course. Did you speak to the hospital about the unlawful practices of the tutor? Maybe you could have changed your tutor and sought approval from elsewhere?
It seems that BMS is wreaking havoc on too many of its pupils!

They informed me they wouldn't be taking me back so I didn't contact them further about it, prior to my course lead messing them around they'd offered to speak to him on my behalf to try and get me back.

I lodged a formal complaint with the university, by the beginning of the second year he'd retired.

I'll still have my BMS degree I'm just sitting my final exam on next Thursday, it's just I have no hope of becoming a BMS because I have no means of getting HCPC registered.

I'm just coming to the end of my BMS degree now, and I'm beyond pissed off with it, I'm actually considering suing the university. I chose my university despite being able to attend more prestigious ones with my grades because they offered the healthcare science route and I could come out of my degree with my IBMS and HCPC certifications and work experience to go with it. During the open day they told me they'd never had a student fail to get a placement.

Once I was halfway though the first semester they announced the Health Care Science PTP placements, and informed us there'd be 7 to go around 140 students. I applied anyway and managed to get a position which was under the proviso that you don't fail anything. I continued on with the first year and worked six weeks during the holidays on my placement. One of our first year tutors deferred half of the student body for missing a "critical lab" which was only marked critical on the non-digital timetables we were told not to use. I submitted my deferred work (a poster) anyway and at the end of my placement they told me I had a score of 39, which I assumed couldn't be right because I was scoring straight firsts for everything else including the written work the poster was based on. Anyway, I was made to jump though a million hoops with my course lead asking me to make appeals he knew were impossible, all the while refusing to even look at the work. Eventually I was told I couldn't attend placement, there was some back and forth with him changing his mind at least twice with the hospital before he actually checked my work. Turns out it was graded wrongly all along, so they fixed it, but by that point the hospital was sick of my course lead messing them around and just outright refused to take me back.

Fast forward to third year and I can't find any jobs in the NHS within the field that don't require HCPC registration, there are no training posts countrywide to get the registration, so I now have no chance of getting the job I want. The field is oversaturated to the point where claiming you can get a job in the field after the degree should be considered outright fraud. I've considered looking at a masters and PhD but from what I've read even that's horrendously over subscribed. My university has posters plastered all over the place claiming a 80% of students in work or further education 6 months after they graduate, but I guess they wouldn't tell you if they were all flipping burgers. In short if anyone is reading this in 2017 avoid biomedical science there are no prospects at the end of it that wouldn't be equally served by any other degree.