Reaching out to our communities

Viapath employees hosted a number of school children over the last two weeks, taking part in the King’s Health Partners Reachout for Healthcare Science  programme, and hosting some children in a return visit from an East London Academy.

Building ties

Back in April, two members of our team from King’s College Hospital took time out from the laboratory to visit the Oasis Academy, Silvertown in East London to  run an interactive healthcare science activity with year 7 students.

The visit was part of a national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) initiative, to emphasise the importance of these disciplines. It proved to be a great success, with students gaining some practical skills with microscopes as well as having the opportunity to ask questions of our experts and their experience.

In an exchange style visit, some of the students were able to visit our people at King’s College Hospital, where they were ‘Honorary Scientists’ for the day, enjoying a mixture of fascinating talks, scientific demonstrations
and tours of our world-class laboratories.

Another successful visit

Feedback from the children was that they were surprised at how much you need to know to be a scientist! They were fascinated by the examples of leukaemia and sickle cell disease slides in Haematology and were impressed by the technology in the Biochemistry labs, but they particularly enjoyed the opportunity to speak to our people about their careers and what it’s like to be a scientist.

We were very happy to host the students from the Oasis Academy Silvertown, and look forward to further such visits in the future.

Reach Out for Healthcare Science

Last week we also participated in hosting 100 GCSE students as part of the Reachout for Healthcare Science programme. The programme is in its third year and aims to inspire and excite children about scientific careers in health, as well as raising awareness of the incredible diversity of roles and disciplines within this arena.

Our partners at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, are one of three London Trusts ( all members of Kings Health Partners) taking part and hosting 100 students for a week, this year’s initiative was sponsored
by Health Education England.

During their week long placement at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals, the students had the opportunity to explore the Viapath laboratories at each site, gaining an overview of a number of pathology disciplines and taking part in some exciting activities!

A range of activities

The students had the opportunity to get involved in a number of different areas, from extracting DNA from strawberries, reviewing morphology slides of different diseases and an introduction to phenotypes and karyotyping in our Genetics laboratories; to mocking up patient referral forms and getting an idea of how patient information is received in specimen receptions.

The students were particularly enthusiastic and intrigued when looking at blood films in Haematology and trying to guess the diagnosis of each patient. Students also took part in activities modelled around Infection Sciences and Metabolic Inherited Diseases using agar plates, fake blood, and apple juice to mimic urine.

They got to see how the full process of how a sample is received in Tissue Sciences and how it is processed; from the receipt of the sample, through to the cutting of tissue and placed in a wax block for analysis, as well as how diagnostic haemostasis laboratories run.  

The students also designed, produced and presented posters at the end of the week on their favourite areas, with many choosing aspects of pathology to present on. The posters were fantastic and one particular presentation by a student on Genetics, which involved an iPad was particularly innovative.

Our people were also on hand to discuss their careers with the students and pass on their first hand experiences of being a Healthcare Scientist. These sorts of events are vital to generating interest in what is an
important profession and we are thrilled to have been able to get involved.

A huge thank you to all of our people who made both of these visits possible.

Further information

Viapath visit to Oasis Academy – April 2015

If you think your students or an event you’re holding would benefit from the expertise of our people, please get in touch using the email address below.

ViapathOutReach [at] viapath [dot] co [dot] uk