As usual there was very little of note
for CPD purposes, but the
first bit made me think.
“Become a biomedical scientist”…
seriously? Part of the article said: "While it is every individual’s
own responsibility to inform themselves and make their own decisions when
embarking on their career, as a professional body we have a greater
responsibility to enable our future members to make the right choices at the
right moments in their lives".
With that in mind I really can't get
involved with this initiative.
Have a look at this table which
compares the average pay rates for different careers (the data comes from
official UK big data sources). What I do isn't listed (no surprise there)
but the average pay for someone in my job is not much different to that listed
for rail travel operatives, road construction operatives and office managers.
But the average pay rate of what I do is after several years in post following
a minimum of four years at university and includes (frankly rather poor)
enhancements for working outside of "routine" hours.
I don't want to appear negative, but
anyone considering the "right choices at the right moments in their
lives" must consider money and work-life balance.
On the one hand people can choose to go
to university for years and run up massive debts to then take on a job which
involves being contracted to work at any time of night or day on any day of the
year.
On the other hand people can choose not
go to university and have a job which gives them evenings and weekends either
free, or paid at sensible overtime rates.
There are those who might claim "there
is more to life than money". But in my experience they are either
rather naïve and impressionable youngsters with no experience of life, or those
with far too much money.
Knowing what I know now, I would never
work anywhere that doesn't periodically put up a "closed"
sign.
But as part of my CPD I have to do stuff
which will improve the lot of the service users (i.e. the general public)
and saying “don’t touch this job with a barge pole” doesn’t do that,
does it? What can we (I) do to improve the lot of the average biomedical
scientist, make it a more attractive career, and actually have a pathology
service for future generations.
The answer is obvious… make the job competitive.
More money; less hours. How do we achieve this… I don’t know.
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