How many patients have you worked with?

Marianne King answered on 5 Jun 2019:

I don’t get to meet or work with any patients with what I do. I think there should be more opportunities for research scientists and patients to meet each other (if they want to of course!) because sometimes it’s easy to forget that the patient cells you’re studying actually belong to real, living people with the disease.

Ross Hill answered on 5 Jun 2019:

My work is primarily based upon mouse models of human disease, but I was fortunate enough to be invited to the USA to present my work at a conference where I was able to interact with patients and their families. From this forums patient samples can be donated for scientific research and across my field many labs work on primary samples from human patients.

Nina Rzechorzek answered on 5 Jun 2019:

Throughout my training probably well over ~2000 veterinary patients. I also had the opportunity to meet several human patients with neurodegenerative disorders (such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and motor neurone disease) during my PhD, which was an amazing experience and really helped spur me on to do more research. Meeting patients helps researchers understand better what patients want and need from biomedical research, which helps shape our research questions and improve our experiments.

Rebecca Moon answered on 5 Jun 2019: last edited 5 Jun 2019 8:55 pm

Short answer is lots!

Long answer:
My job has two roles – I work as a research in clinical (human) studies and as a childrens doctor in the hospital.

For my research, I’d say across all my studies over 3000 people have participated. I dont like to call these people “patients” as many of them are healthy volunteers. The largest study included over 1000 pregnant women and we have followed-up up their children until they are 7, so that’s nearly 2000 people in just that study. I’ve also done studies on children with leukaemia (blood cancer), after head injury, with a kidney disease and children who have broken their bones. Its amazing that so many people are happy to give up their time to come and help us with our research as they dont get paid to come.

In my work in the hospital I get to meet lots of children and their families. I cover children who have to come into hospital unexpectedly because they are unwell and on a busy day, that might be 20-30 children. I also see children in the outpatient clinic, which might he 10 children per clinic, some I might have met before, have given some treatment and am seeing them again whereas some are coming for the first time. I also go to the labour ward when babies are being born if the midwives think they might be poorly when they are born or because they are born too early, and look after them on the neonatal unit. So all in all, thats lots and lots of patients.

Shobhana Nagraj answered on 5 Jun 2019:

It’s been a lot! I’ve been a doctor for over 10 years! Before I started my PhD, I often used my holidays to work overseas in hard to reach areas – where the people had sometimes never seen a doctor in their entire lives! I joined a team of doctors, nurses and pharmacists to conduct medical camps – during these camps, we used to see up to 7000 patients in 5 days as a team! In the NHS, it is less busy, but we can still see hundreds of patients in a week – especially if we work in the emergency department or general practice.

Rachel Hardy answered on 5 Jun 2019:

Like Marianne, I don’t get to work with patients with the job that I do. I spend my days working in a lab, using cells taken from patients as a model for my research. I think it’s a shame that as a research scientist within a University, we don’t get the opportunity to interact with patients more (as I love interacting with people). The main reason that I chose this career was so that I could contribute to research that will hopefully help people in the future. Therefore, it would be great if I got a chance to interact with patients more – as these people are the main factor driving me in my work. However, I sometimes volunteer in public engagement activities, where I get to meet people who have experienced certain diseases first hand – either directly as a patient, or indirectly as a family member/friend. These kinds of activities are great ways to meet and interact with people who you wouldn’t normally meet in the lab, and to gain a wider perspective on exactly why your research matters.

Matthew Bareford answered on 6 Jun 2019:

Having worked in a hospital, I have worked with ALOT of patients… I think my favourite patients to work with are the children and teenagers, they are much more fun and tend to be much easier to get along with if i’m honest!

David Wilson answered on 6 Jun 2019:

I don’t work with patients directly but I occasionally meet them and their families at conferences and meetings. I find this really valuable as it’s a good reminder of what the bigger picture is I’m working in and who I’m ultimately working for.

Kate Timms answered on 6 Jun 2019:

Quite a lot! My research is based on human placentas, so most mornings I go over to the delivery suite at our local hospital and sit in on the meeting between the doctors about which women will be having c-sections that day. Then I go and speak to some of these women about donating their placentas to research. If they give me their consent, I go and get scrubs on and stand in theatre whilst they’re having their c-sections. I get to see their babies being born and then take the placentas back to my lab to do experiments on. It’s amazing to see so many babies being born!

Ettie Unwin answered on 6 Jun 2019:

I don’t get to work directly with patients but in my work we use data that is collected on the ground in countries that are suffering from the diseases we are interested in. I think its really important for us to work closely with those doing the data collection to ensure it’s being done correctly and we are making the most of the information they get for us.

Thiloka Ratnaike answered on 7 Jun 2019:

It is difficult to put a number to it because I have seen a lot of patients both here in the UK and in Australia since becoming a doctor. During my research, I mainly see patients in the mitochondrial disease clinic. The service is fairly new in Cambridge, so we don’t see huge numbers of patients yet (perhaps 6-7 during 1 clinic), however, I happily get to see lots of children during my other job as a children’s doctor!

Kaitlin Wade answered on 7 Jun 2019:

I don’t really work with patients. I use information collected from people from questionnaires or clinic visits. This data I use can range massively in size. One of the biggest datasets I use is a study call the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which is also known as the Children of the 90s study, and this is a dataset of 14,000 mums, dads and children. Another study I use, called the UK Biobank study, has information on up to 500,000 individuals!

Shonna Johnston answered on 8 Jun 2019:

I haven’t worked directly with any patients. Most clinical trials are ‘blind’ so that the patient samples are unidentifiable – names and information removed and replaced with a number or code – by the time they reach the lab.
However, biomedical scientists like to learn where their research fits with medical advancement and patient care as this is the ultimate purpose.

Question: How many patients have you worked with?

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