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As its #InternationalDayOfWomenInScience I thought I'd talk about my research job. I'd never thought much about doing research until I started @TraumaMasters and discovered how little we know about the body's response to injury...
...I didn't know anyone who'd done a PhD, so I was quite nervous about making the decision to pause my emergency medicine training to do research but I'm really enjoying it so far, even though things have been different recently because of the pandemic...
So, trauma research. We can't really ask people to volunteer to suffer major trauma so we've got to be opportunistic. There are 8 doctors or nurses who provide 24/7 cover for research in the hospital. Half are women 
We join the trauma team and will go down to the emergency department for trauma calls where we’ll decide whether the patient can be included in any of the studies we’re currently recruiting to...
If we recruit a patient, we may take blood samples, administer medication or blood products and collect lots of information at various time points including medications or blood products given, observations and some blood test results. Sometimes we’ll do all of these things
If we take blood samples, we take them to our lab on the trauma ward and run specialist clotting tests or process the samples so they can be frozen to be used later on...
In between trauma calls we visit the patients in our studies for up to 28 days after admission where we talk to them about the research they’re participating in, take samples and collect more data
On a Saturday morning we have mandatory meetings with our research supervisor, @meow_london
When we’re not on call, we work on our own research. This may be in the lab but a lot of my work, especially during the pandemic, has been based on data we’ve already collected.
I have a research supervisor at home too. She’s quite strict and she has her own chair
I have a research supervisor at home too. She’s quite strict and she has her own chair
...but even working from home, you're not really alone. Although we have our own projects, we work together within the research group, and outside it to share ideas and solve problems...
Your projects can be really long, complicated and frustrating but its also the most exciting part - it’s the opportunity to make your own contribution to our understanding of how things work, and to change things for the better for a whole group of people...
