I received an email today through the “contact me” link on my website of advice for students tackling the pre-registration portfolio. In the first instance I’m pleased because this website is clearly working and being found by its target audience.
A very pleasant-sounding young lady had emailed to ask me “….I have an IBMS accredited degree and now looking to find an approved laboratory in which I can complete my training to attain the cert. of competence. Can you recommend which laboratories to approach and how I go about contacting them, I have no idea where to start”.
My heart goes out to people like this young lady. Things were different when I was a lad: effectively we did an apprenticeship. We started in the lab having left school with “A” levels. (Or in my case having left school having failed miserably and having given up half way towards getting “A” levels).
We then did our academic qualifications on day release, with the academic subjects being taught by academic tutors at the colleges and universities, and with the specialist subjects being taught by the senior and chief biomedical scientists from the hospitals closest to the particular college or university you were studying at.
In a more enlightened era I would have been lecturing on a very regular basis at the university.
“Back in the day” you therefore got a good grounding in academic/scientific theory from those best qualified to provide it, and a good grounding in the nuts and bolts of your chosen profession from those best qualified to provide it.
Nowadays you don’t seem to get that at all. It’s (mostly) all academia and very little hands-on real-life input.
Quite frankly my piss is boiling that having been on a formally accredited honours degree, no one has taken the time to explain to this young lady the logistics of getting the job for which she has been preparing herself….
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