Invernessian medical physics student needs your help
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Andrew Johnstone a medical physics student from Inverness is looking to fundraise to go on a placement to New Zealand. He is hoping this trip will give him valuable experience and knowledge that he can bring back to the NHS.
After attending Charleston Academy, Andrew then went to Edinburgh University to do a masters degree in astrophysics. Going down the path of a physicist only to learn about the relatively unknown role of a clinical scientist.
Andrew said “clinical scientists make up 5 percent of the NHS workforce with more than 50 specialisms within the job but people just don’t seem to know about them”.
He decided instead to pursue this as a career seeing the opportunity “to use physics in a healthcare setting and get to help people”.
Currently he is doing a part time masters in medical physics in London as part of his NHS training program. This has given him the chance to go and study in New Zealand.
Why go to New Zealand? According to Andrew “New Zealand is pretty advanced. I will get to learn and gain experience in a different country, different healthcare setting and learn new techniques that I can bring back to the NHS”.
While there are many specialisms, Andrew is looking at cancer treatment using radiotherapy. “Radiotherapy physics essentially involves looking at the use of radiation to treat cancer. The whole idea of this is working out how best to kill the cancer cells while avoiding damaging healthy cells.”
“We plan patient treatments and test the various machines to ensure they are precise and accurate. There is currently a lot of research going on in radiotherapy with new developments taking place, so quite an interesting area.”
He also hopes to raise awareness of the role in the public. “When people look at going to uni they might not think of it as an endpoint. Like physics, they do it in high school and think they’ll go down to research academia, theoretical but a clinical scientist is applicable and it’s an important job.”
If anyone wants to donate to help Andrew get to New Zealand or if anyone has any interest in hearing more about the role of a clinical scientist, Andrew can be reached at the following email address: andrew.johnstone6@nhs.net
