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Molecular and Translational Haematology

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Summary

This on-demand teaching session is relevant to medical professionals, offering an in-depth look at Hematology and its academic benefits. Professionals will learn the fundamentals of Hematology, the unique academic opportunities it provides, the diverse projects they can undertake, and the passionate lecturers they'll be working with. The session also provides detailed information on how Hematology can impact their future medical specialty interests and improve various aspects of their applications for additional training and research opportunities.

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Description

MedED is delighted to announce the Year 3 BSc Fair, taking place on Friday 17th February at 6pm!

There will be a short introductory talk on choosing your BSc followed by a drop in breakout room Q&A. There will be representatives from every BSc to answer any questions you have!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Ria Varma (Year 4 Coordinator)

Learning objectives

Learning Objectives for Medical Audience:

  1. Identify the diverse components and topics of the BSc in Hematology program
  2. Describe the academic benefits and outputs of Hematology research and lab work
  3. Explain how Hematology research can supplement interests in surgery
  4. Compare how Imperial College London is unique in its Hematology BSc program to other institutions
  5. Recognize the advantages of a small cohort size in Hematology teaching and research opportunities.
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Computer generated transcript

Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

6 45. You're more than welcome to leave. But if you could just give an answer for the recording, which has just started now about what favorite thing is about your BSC, that would be fantastic. So I can then just keep that for student. Sure, thank you so much. Yeah, sure. So in terms of the favorite thing about the BSE, I'd say it's probably it's the best supported BSC by far in terms of the staff. Like the course director, you email him within half an hour, you'll get response back. So, yeah, you don't really get that in most of the other B S. C and also the diversity in the topics. It's quite a holistic BSC. So you basically learn something that's going to be applicable in whatever field of medicine or surgery that you later decide to go into. And also it's probably one of the most cutting edge Bs CS because in terms of academia hematology, there's always something new. It's probably the most, if not the most academic field of medicine by far, so you'll always be at the very forefront of any type of knowledge. And finally, also the lecturers. You're gonna be taught by people who literally define the field. So yeah. Hi. Um, era is it, uh, feel free to, like, under mute and turn your my, uh, turn your camera on or right in the chat. Whichever you feel more comfortable with your mike's blocked. Fair enough. Do you want to just have something in the chat? Then how have I found it? Um well, I found it Very good, to be honest. So, like Rio said in the beginning, all the school of medicine bs CS are quite similar structure. So you have more to one which is going to consist of your three I. C. A s. Now hematology does it a bit differently where you have your oral presentation first. Then you have your commentary. Then you finally have your data analysis. Um, then you have module to which is the literature review and your signs and context, which is basically a case report. And then now we're on module three, which is for most people. A lab projects in hematology because by far out of all the bs CS, it's the most inclined to lab work. And if that's something you're really interested in, I'd highly recommend it, especially in medicine. You don't really get that much exposure to labs, so you don't really know if you want to do labs or not. And the BSE is one of your best opportunities to really get stuck in with some lab work and understand if it's really for you or not. Um, like, regardless of if you like the experience or not, it's 16 weeks. You'll still get your like. You still get your B S C at the end of it and you'll if you love it. Then you'll find a connection with the supervisor, who more often times than not, wants to actually support you further after that. Or if you hate it, then you at least know you hate it and you hate and you've learned that very early on. Um, but everyone who's almost done labs by the end of it learns to love it. And there is a lot to love about labs. Um, but yeah, if if there's like more specific questions, please tell me, um, I can go into stuff like, if it's about assessments, I can go into what they're more like if it's about the teaching I can do that? Um, yeah. Just tell me whichever Whatever part of it you want me to go into, I can go into it. Sure. Calves, if you can answer this other question as well. Um, recording's benefit. Uh, just turning off your camera and like, audio when formed my academic interest. Okay, Um, so my academic interests, uh, I want to do surgery. I still haven't decided what type of surgery. It's between general and pediatric right now. Um, but yeah, I know this is really different to hematology, but actually, there's a lot of overlap. So, hematology, That's why I chose it. Because I wanted something that, first of all, stuck out. Um, from my academic interest in surgery, I wanted something outside of the fields because especially now when you apply for things like CST training a lot of the time, diversity in your application is your best friend. So a lot of people applying for things like trauma and author. Oftentimes they actually take, like, an F three year just to do some general surgery jobs because it looks really good on the application when you apply with that general surgery knowledge. And if I apply for general surgery with like knowledge of human ecology, which bone marrow transplantations and really cutting edge. Things like that informs a lot of other types of surgery. So just transplant surgery in general, the the principles of bone marrow transplantation have been adapted and, um, obviously implemented into other types of surgery, so that the way it's informed by academic interest, I'd say it's supplemented it rather than directed it more than anything. And I would say that it's diversified my academic interest by far. Um, I went into the BSE, uh, wanting to increase the amount of research output that I already had going for me. Um, and for sure, um, hematology has been really excellent with that, especially for your science in context. If you have a very supportive consultant like I did and you show enthusiasm, they get you on board for so many extra projects. So for the science in context, ideally, you can write it up, and then if your consultants really supportive, you can get it published. Um, that's not really too big of an ask, but from my my science in context, I got three additional projects to do. Uh, so that just gives you an inclination. Like how much academic output you can get out of hematology as a BSC. Um, but apart from that as well, I would say it's broadened my horizons as to what surgery has to offer. And I've realized that a career in highly medicalized specialty I is not for me. I I need to see, like, the fast changes and I need to see, like, the here and now, um, to to have that satisfaction and medicine doesn't really offer that to you, whereas surgery does. But Hume Atala Gee, like a lot of my a lot of the hematologist consultants who lecturers have told us half the time they called by surgeons because they don't know what's going on because they weren't talk hematology or any other blood blocking properly. So all hematology consultants' have actually told me you're probably going to be one of the best surgeons in your cohort just because you've done this BSC um, Grace, is it? Feel free to like on mute. Hey, Yaz. Hello. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? Uh, yeah, it's okay. I mean, like, there's only been three people coming in. I only came here to give you some moral support. I need it. I really do need it. I can't like I mean, like like, feel free to ask questions. Um, I think there's something in the truck, Um, feel like him is the underdog underdog. To be honest, um, him is like the one is like the hidden gem that Imperial has to offer. You have to remember. So the first thing that no one tells you about him, there's only one institution in the whole of the UK and I'm pretty sure the whole of the world that actually does a BSC in hematology and that's imperial. So anyone in the UK who actually wants to do a B SC in hematology comes to Imperial, and it's one of the smallest cohorts that there is. I think the only smaller cohort than Hume Atala Gee, for the B S. C. A. Is immunology, and you might think that's a bad thing. But actually like a really, really good thing, because first of all, from a teaching perspective, um, you literally get like it's not even like lectures. It's almost like 1 to 1 tuition. You get half the time from your lecturers because like you can, they will be so attentive to you because it's such a small cohort and they know that everyone there is there because they want to be there. So they're really, really engaging when it comes to your questions. Like I'm sure both you might have had Barbara Baines proof. Baines. Um, in first year or second year? Um, but Barbara Baines in first year and second year, it's completely different person and fourth year, the amount of attention and the amount of detail that she'll go into in fourth year if you do. The hematology BSC is so diverse and so engaging that, like you're literally being told by the person who define half of diagnostic hematology, right? Like she created the field. She's specialized in no other. No other BSC, frankly, in most of the country provides you that, like the only other one that I can think of is pre hospital medicine at. But the person who does, like, organizes the pre hospital medicine literally set up like the royal, um uh, ambulance in the whole of London, like that's crazy, but it's the same thing in hematology. You the people who are taught by Barbara Veins like, Yeah, there there's there's no comparison. Like she's just a legend. I'm gonna say, Yeah, I feel like you need to be on, like, you know, for the faculty. Be Assefa. Like, if you're not the student, he's like on the store. Uh, okay, Uh, honestly, apart from that, what I'd also say so obviously like they wouldn't do this every single year. But, um, when it comes to like your lab selection projects like your project selections a lot of the time, like other bs CS are really, really competitive in the way they do, like the whole project's so like for cardio. And like other, much larger BSC Sobieski cohorts are like 40 50 60 people write for each of the projects. Half the time you need to write personal statement. You need to go through like a whole like selection process, and also your I C. A s all counts like your rank. So they rank you based on your I see a marks and then tell you, like, based off of that, um, which projects you get so usually the people who get higher marks get like the more interesting projects, right? But in hematology, for example, So there was 17 projects available to us and there's only 13 students. So pretty much everyone got like the top three. Um, now I was one of the unlucky few who got their fifth. However, when I talked to the course director, they literally created a whole project from scratch for me because I was so enthusiastic about doing a project on bone marrow and the stem cells environment. So that's what I'm doing right now. So our project is looking into how stem cells and the bone marrow micro environment changes after treatment for malaria, which is actually like, really important stuff because, especially if you take things like, um covid into consideration at the beginning of covid, a lot of people actually used antimalarial drugs to treat it. Um, now, like in some countries that works like an India lot, a lot of places actually worked, So it's really interesting to see how such like a diverse drug class affects the micro environment of something which is going to affect you like lifelong, because you have to remember people who go through malaria. They're not only going to have short term consequences to the immunological system and human divertic system. They're gonna have, like, long term consequences that can last like even decades. So it's It's fascinating to actually look into that, and you learn also like the one big thing about hematology. Unlike all the other Bs CS, remember, it's not Hematology is actually molecular and translational hematology and, like the molecular and translational part, is actually very, very important because you learn basically all of flow cytometry all of like fish, all of cyto genetics. All of these, like really cutting edge molecular techniques, which puts you basically ahead of your entire cohort when it comes to fifth year and ahead of your entire cohort. When it comes to things like CST applications, call med training applications even F one F two. You're going to be so ahead of the curve in understanding everything that, like consultants, are going to love you because you'll get to a diagnosis so much faster because you've seen these tools day in, day out for like, an entire year, where for everyone else, it's just that one specialty. There's not really much holistically. They're learning, whereas what we're learning holistically. It's applied to every single specialty. And, like, no matter how cliche it is, right, it's medicine. You're not going to get away from blood. All right? Blood is the only constant you have in every single specialty. Yeah, I don't care who says anything otherwise, regardless of if you're doing neurosurgery or if you're an obstetrician, you're always gonna see blood. So, like, this exposes you to understanding basically the constant in all of medicine, but, yeah, that makes sense. Thank you so much. No worries, No worries. Um, if you have any other, like, specific questions, please don't hesitate. I'm happy to answer anything. Like, if it's are the lecturers scary. It's like the course like workload intense. I'm happy to answer like, all of that stuff. But I'd rather you ask me rather than just me ramble on, because if you let me ramble, I'll ramble here for, like, two hours straight. I'm going to head off to another one. Um, yeah, I'll catch you. I'll see you tomorrow anyway. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Um, so no such thing as a silly question. Great. Don't worry. Uh, what do projects actually evolve? So really good question. Actually, um so projects can vary highly based on your supervisor, based on if it's lab or clinical, and also based on if based on the actual content of your project. So my project is in bone marrow and my supervisors professor local so And she'll be one of the people who teaches you at the beginning of the year and that. That's to be honest. One of the main reasons why I wanted to do bone marrow because I love the style of teaching her style of teaching is very, very, uh, you learn. And then you ask me questions and I am a very, very like I don't like being just spoon fed everything. I like questioning a lot, and she loves to hear a bunch of questions. So that's one thing. Whenever it comes to deciding a project, always make sure that, like your supervisor, is in line with your style of learning. Now, in terms of what you actually do, it's going to change a lot. Um, so for mine, we literally need to create the project from scratch, So we need just, like, go through. Um, if we're using that mice models or not, um, and and, like what specific disease we're looking into. So initially we're looking into, like, leukemia and malaria. But then we realized, actually, leukemia is not that great. Um, in terms of, like the report findings, because it's basically been done to that. So now we're gonna look at malaria and post treatment and what you do, you're going to look into things like microscopy, flow, cytometry, um, immunostaining. There's a bunch of different lab techniques, and it's really going to change from Project Project. Like I can't give you a blank. It'd answer. But I can say that for every single lab project you do in hematology, you will at least encounter, I'd say a bare minimum of three different laboratory techniques which would be holistically applicable to like, your whole entire medical career. Um, hi, Christine. Please feel free to a mute and ask questions or type in the chat. I'm just Yeah, um or like, yeah, if you want me to, Like, repeat any of the answers that have, Like any other questions that have already been asked, I'm I'm more than happy to do. So. Wait. So are you actually in the lab? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm actually in the lab. So my lab is based in South Kensington. And we're literally, like, in the lab working with bone marrow, uh, like bone marrow slices. And we're, like, cryos cryos sectioning them, then immunostaining them, then analyzing them underneath like the microscope And like, identifying all the different cell types using, like, the the C D three markers and everything. And then we're gonna, like, obviously, you need to write it up on like, and then come to your own discussion's as to how the micro environment changes and where you think that's beneficial for the next steps in research. Yeah, you're actually in the lab. Um, what are the What are some of the most exciting things you've learned? We've done so far. So, um, I'd say the most interesting lecture that I've had, um, so I'm a massive, like, surgery head. Um, and you're probably thinking Then why are you doing hematology? Uh, but to be honest, I wanted something to diversify my experience because I feel every single person who wants to do surgery has a surgery BSC and you want to stand out, Especially the way surgery is going ahead. You want to stand out as much as possible. So the most interesting lecture for me, by far was by a professor Apple E. And I'm pretty sure she'll be teaching you guys next year as well. And her lecture was on burn marriage transplants and learning about like the history of where bone marrow transplants comes from. So how they came from, like World War Two survivors in, um from like the, uh, nuclear bombs that were dropped and looking into how the human Partick system is actually affected by the radiation and that and then extrapolating that data into how we can use that radiation for, uh, for the my ablative. So, uh, my ablative therapy that you need for bone marrow transplantation, like actually seeing how scientists think and how doctors should think in terms in order to improve treatment for patient's its class, like there's no other way to describe it. It's just like it's It's so obvious when you actually like, sit down and think about it. But one thing you'll realize is obvious is not always easy, Like the initial idea that I I hypothesized to my professors for the for the project that I'm doing, they were like, This is very obvious idea, but it's also like a PhD level thesis. Um, so you can't do this in 16 weeks. So, like, you realize as well obvious a lot of people just don't have the time to actually investigate it, which is really, like it's really Yeah, it's just very interesting in terms of where research can go regarding that. And then in terms of what I've done so far, that's probably the most exciting. Um, So what I've done so far, I would say, is, uh, still yet to come because I haven't done a lot of the lab like stuff yet for my project. So our projects literally only started, uh, last week, Um, last last last week. Sorry. And, yeah. So I haven't really had that much time to actually sit down with my, um, professors and I do the lab stuff yet, so it's still yet to come, like in terms of what is the most exciting done, uh, to do physically. But in terms of learning Yeah. Um, cool. Uh, Jasmine, please feel free to, like, type in the chat as well. Like Grace and Christina doing, um, does the small cohort make it fairly difficult to get first know. So this is the thing. It's not like all the other years of Imperial where your cohort matters, right? All work is marked individually. Okay, so and when it comes to like if you get a 1st 21 to 2, all of these things, no one really gets a 22. It's 21 or a first. It's always based off of If you get 70% and above, it's first. If you get 60% or above, it's 21. And, yeah, the small cohort size actually has no effect on that whatsoever. In actuality, it's probably beneficial because you get really good feedback from the course director on how to improve and often more times than not, like your cohort as a as a whole is really, really supportive. So everyone knows everyone in hematology like were 13 people. It's like a really close knit family. Almost. It's like basically the same size that you have in like firms for hospital, right? So imagine how close you are with your firm and your firm. You only know for six weeks I know these people for like the whole entire year, right? So everyone's really supportive of each other. And as I said, Imperial is the only place in the whole of the UK which does this BSC, right? So people come literally all over the UK to do the B s c here. So majority of your cohort actually gonna be externals? And that is really good in terms of experience, because you learn how different medical schools teach medicine. You learn how different medical schools teach people to think. And you also get like, exposure to different ways of thinking, which you don't really get another bs CS, which, like heavy, heavy, imperial or like Yeah, I don't I don't really have a have another way to phrase it. Um yeah, any other questions like so how difficult is it to get first? I've heard it's one of the No no. But so the thing is right. Getting a first is going to be difficult in every single BSC now. So the it's not like it was, So if it was a couple of years back, right, let's take two years ago, right? Your first two years of medical school actually counted towards your BSC, so a lot of people who did really well in the first two years that, like, added up. And then that was like, 10 or 12. Uh, it was like 10 or 15% of your B S E. And that's why it was relatively easy for people to get first. But now, from my year onwards, the first two years don't count for anything. So your whole BSC is just your b s a year and only your BSE accounts, and it's not impossible like it's not difficult, difficult to get first. It is hard work, but all the bs CS are going to be hard work. That's like, Don't base your BSC off of which one's easy to get first because if you do that, you will get first. But you won't like the year, right? Like you will find the year very taxing on you. And this should be an enjoyable year, like by the end of it, you should feel that. Okay, I'm a thoroughbred researcher in the sense that I know what research methodologies are like. I like my topic, but I want to delve more into research, right. That's what they're trying to get out of this year, and they're not trying to make you hemotologists in a year. They're just trying to give you a flavor of what it is, and you then can develop on after that. I hope that answers your question. Good. All right. Great. Yeah, No worries. What was that, The last question, or you're okay if it's very research based two people to Yeah, so So now. So in in terms of hematology, like, realistically, I'm planning on hopefully at least getting, like, two or three publications by the end of this year. So, like the case report, I'm going to try and get that published, um, and hopefully presented somewhere. And then also, like, my final projects and bare minimum. I'm going to get, try and get that presented somewhere, and then hopefully stay on with my, um, group so that I can, like, actually get it published in in a paper. Um, yeah. Like to like by far. If publications is where you want to go into hematology is really good for that. Like, are you planning on becoming like a hematologist or because you said it was one of your top? Okay. Okay, fine. Um, yeah. So in terms of that, then I would say this is this is probably overspend in getting like a publication in hematology. Um, if you if you are, like that interested in hematology, Uh, when you if you if you get hematology, get in contact with me, and then I can probably get you on board for a project that I'm doing at a couple of other places, like I'm always doing something in research here and there. So, yeah, I'm one of those people in the year, so yeah, if you if you want to get involved in, like, a heme project, I'm more than happy to look into something for you. Yeah. So my short code is K V 219. Yeah. Don't hesitate to drop a line. Um, I'm more than happy to, like, get you involved in some research, If that's yeah, also like, make sure that you actually do well in third year. Third year is less intensive than second year, but nevertheless, actually do put effort. And I know they're changing like the whole E p m decile schools and everything, but you actually want to feel like you're halfway to being a doctor. by the end of third year. So really do put in the effort because it will pay off a lot for 50 year and especially in fourth year, because fourth year, you'll lose touch. Um, like, I'm literally just doing a bunch of our ski teaching just so that I maintain the touch. That's one thing I would recommend as well. But yeah, any other questions, or is that pretty much it? I'm happy to answer any more questions. Cool. Cool. Um, if you have any other questions like, don't hesitate to drop me a line. I'm usually quite good with my emails if I don't have a deadline looming over my head, but yeah, mhm. Hey, um, real quick. Is it okay? Hey, Carve. You're more than welcome to pop off. You know, other people left. I'm going to send the certificates tonight. Um, if someone gives you any feedback that mentions mentions your breakout rooms specifically, I will send it to you. So you know what people are saying? Thank you so much for stepping in. It's lovely to you. And I'm sure, like 30 years are going to benefit so much from this. Thank you.