9 August 2023 (Wednesday) - IBMS Newsletter

 

The IBMS newsletter appeared in my in-box today. You can read it by clicking here.

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.