hey, hello, hi!
This weeks #WISW/#WomeninSTEMWednesday is the incredibly inspiring Lucy or @medicalphysicist_lucy as some of you might know her as!
Hi everyone! I’m Lucy, a 22 year old trainee medical physicist. I grew up in Dorset, before moving to Cornwall and now living in Plymouth. I graduated with a degree in Physics from Oxford in 2019 and then spent a year waitressing and applying to the Scientist Training Programme (STP), which I am now in my first year of.
The STP is a training scheme in a range of specialisms from genetic counselling to cardiac sciences. It’s a 3 year programme for which you work at a hospital but also complete a masters course in clinical sciences part time. I am on the medical physics specialism, which like all STP courses, involves rotating through several hospital departments in the first year before specialising in the final two. In medical physics, year 1 includes: Imaging with Ionising radiation (x-ray, CT, nuclear medicine), Imaging with non-ionising radiation (Ultrasound, lasers, MRI), Radiation protection and Radiotherapy Physics. Alongside this, I am also completing my masters at King’s College London (although I haven’t actually been there!)
What were you interested in at school, and why?
I loved school, there were very few subjects I didn’t enjoy. Despite this, from an early age I was obsessed with maths. As well as being my strongest subject, I genuinely loved any maths problem I was given and spent a lot of spare time outside of school with extra maths textbooks.
When I started high school I had the best physics teacher and within a few months I was converted! For me, physics was the solution to how I could practically apply the maths I was learning in a way to hopefully one day help people.
Do you think outside interests/hobbies play an important role in encouraging more girls into STEM?
I think they play a huge role! Personally I think the most disadvantaged I’ve been as a girl in STEM is the marketing of STEM toys towards boys from a young age. Having had an excellent and fair school education I never felt I was disadvantaged academically compared to boys. However, in my first month of uni I found myself in a computer suite with approximately 15 girls and 150 boys to start our coding module and it was here I realised how behind I was. My limited computer knowledge was very ICT based – excel, word etc, whereas so many of the boys were already fluent in coding languages I had never heard of. After asking lots of my peers what experience they had I realised that from a young age boys are pushed towards computer games, which although may not originally involve coding, can often pave the way for developments in their computer science knowledge that I never received playing with Barbies etc. I felt this continued at school, where although there were plenty of STEM clubs available (which in hindsight I should have attended) they felt very marketed at boys – often male led and involving things such as race cars which were of no interest to my 13 year old self. I think there is a massive gap in the market for coding games/clubs which focus around ideas that girls feel more familiar with.
What pathway did you take to get into your job?
I took Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry A-levels in 2016 and then did a Physics degree at Oxford. I was originally on a 4-year masters (MPhys) course but found the Oxford course very heavy in mathematics and wanted to get into something more practical. For this reason I switched to the 3-year degree course in my last year, with the intention of one day doing a masters in the area I decided to work in.
After finishing uni, I very quickly realised that not wanting to work in the finance or the defence industry cut down my physics graduate scheme options. I came across medical physics, which I had never really even heard of! I managed to do some work experience at my local hospital (luckily right before COVID hit) and then applied to the STP. Due to COVID it was a very long and drawn out application process and to be honest I’d given up all hope in march last year, after also applying to many other jobs, but finally got the STP job!
What’s your favourite thing about your job and why?
I just love the fact that my job involves all the physics and maths I know and love but also is a really hands-on, practical application of them. In addition, the variety of my work keeps everyday so new and exciting!
What do you find most challenging about your job and why?
Having done a pure physics degree and never ever imagining myself working in healthcare, I initially found the hospital environment overwhelming. I am not a fan of blood and (very luckily) having never spent any time in a hospital was very anxious about even going to my work experience and being around so many ill people. I suffered quite badly from imposter syndrome for the first few weeks at work due to these feelings, but having talked to a lot of people at the hospital so many people feel the same way.
I have learnt that you very quickly become familiar with new environments and also that there are so few medical physicists, yet they are so crucial in the hospital. Scientists might be often ‘behind the scenes’ but so many treatments depend on them! My advice to anyone worried like I was is that once you realise what an important and unique job you are doing, the reward you get from knowing you’re helping people everyday far outweighs any uncertainty.
What does your day-to-day life look like while at work?
For example, on Monday last week I spent the morning monitoring and decontaminating a room on the cancer ward after a radioactive patient had stayed the night. We cover the room in cling film (floor and walls!) so that we can dispose of that quickly, hopefully removing most of the contamination, but still the shower and toilet can be very radioactive and hence must be checked and cleaned.
In the afternoon I was making up radioactive injections in the radiopharmacy ready to be administered to patients. Since they are prescribed a certain activity per kg of weight we must draw up the isotope taking into consideration how much has decayed since it was manufactured.
Finally, I helped to test and set up a new CT scanner that has just been commissioned, it has a new feature to help adjust the x-ray parameters based on the patient’s size in order to spare them from as much radiation dose as possible.
Have you ever felt your gender has influenced the opportunities you’ve been offered and/or experienced so far?
Whilst I think women suffer an awful lot of injustice and lack of opportunities in the workplace, personally I feel I’ve had a fairly good experience in my education/career so far. Although my physics teachers, lecturers and now colleagues have been predominantly male I do feel like I have been treated fairly and given equal opportunities to my male peers. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t daunting being the only non-privately educated non-male in the room throughout my degree, or that sometimes when I was struggling with some work I had no one to turn to. From my experience, women tend to be more comfortable to confide in each other when they are finding things hard and this was definitely something I really missed and was disadvantaged by throughout my degree.
What advice would you give to young girls who are interested in pursuing a STEM career?
Yes physics is currently male-dominated and whilst that may put some young girls off, the more girls that get into physics the more we correct this! Therefore, I think it’s so important for women in STEM to be involved in outreach and to show young girls that we are here and in some STEM subjects now even in equal numbers to men. I know sometimes it’s hard being the only woman in the room but try to remember how much power comes with that and the ability to be part of changing that.
Thank you so much for sharing your story Lucy! It sounds like the STP is the perfect opportunity for anyone looking to use their skills and knowledge within the NHS, in a more practical setting.
I may be bias being a medical engineer but medical physics sounds super interesting – especially if you get to work with radioactive material everyday! I love that you highlight how crucial the ‘behind the scenes’ staff are within a hospital! Of course clinical staff do wonderful jobs but the entire hospital would not function without the scientists, technologists and engineers that run things in the background!
I also really enjoyed the section where you talk about the lack of STEM toys aimed at girls. Its something I hadn’t even thought about before a conversation with a friend – which I’m ashamed to admit only occurred a few weeks ago. There is definitely a huge market out there for anyone that can bring inclusivity into the STEM toy industry. And you absolutely hit the nail on the head with STEM clubs at schools being targeted at boys! I really feel this is the crucial change that needs to occur to see more females taking STEM subject at higher levels of education!
Also your advice to aspiring Women in STEM was PERFECT. Sometimes it can feel daunting and I still get it now where I receive an invite to something where every name in the email thread is male and instantly don’t want to go. But you’re so right that being a female in a male dominated world can be so empowering!
For anyone looking to find out more of what Lucy gets up to everyday then head over to her Instagram @medicalphysicist_lucy !
Thanks again Lucy.
All my love, Meg x
Girls Who STEM 
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