A day in the life of a biomedical scientist

Andrew Paluszkiewicz is a biomedical scientist at Nottingham University Hospital Trust (NUH) working in the haematology and blood transfusion departments, which provides a 24/7 service to patients. The two departments perform a vast array of routine and specialized tests to aid the monitoring and diagnosis of conditions such as anaemia, leukaemia, sickle cell disease, haemophilia and other bleeding and clotting conditions, while also providing compatible blood components and products. This is achieved by identifying patients’ blood groups and detecting and identifying clinically significant antibodies that could cause a transfusion reaction, and potentially death, if incompatible units are transfused.