Profile

I work in infection control and my job is to make sure that everyone who is in the hospital is safe; whether they are patients, visitors or staff.

I work with the lab who process everyone’s samples and they tell me when someone has a bug.  I then look to see where that bug has come from.

Sometimes it has come from the patient themselves, when their won bugs have got from a place where they should be to a place where they shouldn’t be.
Sometimes it has moved from one patient to another; and we need to check that people have been wearing masks, gloves, gowns, or washing their hands.
Sometimes it has come from the environment and I need to work out if it has come from keyboards, toilets or even the biscuit tin!

To make sure that the bugs I find in other places are the same as the one in sample I need to carry out a police style investigation.  I do this I can use a number of techniques, from DNA fingerprinting, sequencing DNA, or looking at resistance to different antibiotics.

I also do research to try and work out how to stop bugs spreading in the first place.  This has included looking at gas that can spread around rooms to kill bugs as well as looking at how certain objects a more contaminated with bugs than others and changing their design, like telephones.

My normal day starts with a lot of tea, as once the day starts I usually don’t get much time to stop.

During the day I get all kinds of phone calls asking me questions about what should happen to patients who have bugs.  In between phone calls I investigate how those patients got their bugs.

On top of this I will run experiments to see how we can stop bugs getting into patients.

These can include sitting in a laboratory with a pipette running tests based on DNA.
It can include going to my friend Mels lab, she has a bedroom size chamber where I can release bugs and she how they would spread in a hospital bedspace.  Sometimes we then release things like gas that will kill bacteria and so we can tell how that would work in a hospital.
Finally I spend times on the wards, taking samples from surfaces, water and air to see what there.  I also watch people and see how they move, what they touch, and what they clean.

I work with scientists, doctors, nurses, cleaners and patients and that means that no two days are the same.  My job is brilliant, challenging and fun.