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I look at samples from patients to help diagnose their disease. It could be urine, faeces, blood, semen, sputum, pus or toenails amongst other things.

Sometimes I find bacteria or viruses that are causing infection. Sometimes I don’t, and that can also rule out an infection and lead to another medical condition being diagnosed.

I spend about a month on each sample type, or diagnostic area. At the moment, I am using PCR to diagnose Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea infection. Next month it may be food poisoning diagnosis from faeces samples.

All my equipment must be tested before it can be used on patients, to make sure that it is working properly. I prepare any chemicals that I will need to use today. Then I check that all of my samples are correctly matched with the request forms that they arrived with.

I load my samples onto the PCR machine, together with all the others chemicals and equipment required. I start the run and use the incubation step as a chance to grab a cup of tea! My lunch break is also dictated by the testing that I am doing.

Any gaps in time are spent helping others lab sections, performing other responsibilities, such as reading the Mycology samples or marking students work, and preparing the next batch of samples to be tested the following day.