Cardiac/Respiratory Physiologist??

FairytaleGirl

Hi guys,

While researching my options for if im unsucessful for medicine again - boo - Ive whittled it down to two options - A Paramedic or a Physiologist.

Now I would love to be a Paramedic if I cant be a Doctor - But i know its SUPER hard to get into and super duper competitive. (Anyone feel free to correct me on that)

Then I stumbled onto a Physiologist - Here is more info:
http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/explore-by-career/healthcare-science/careers-in-healthcare-science/careers-in-physiological-sciences/

and Im not gonna lie - Im tempted, the career prospects are excellent and the pay is good. The degree http://prospectus.ulster.ac.uk/course/?id=10749 is paid for by the NHS as well.

The only problem is I cant find the job on the HSE. It doesnt seem to exist. There is no such job! Am I just looking in the wrong place?!

Advice/knowledge welcome - On either of those options. Is Paramedic training just as hard to come by as a ticket to med school? Whats the pay like?

Dee

StudentC

Hi

Happened to see this thread on the front page -used to work in the area so I thought I'd wade in.

I've been out of the area a few years (and was only in it briefly) so I certainly don't claim to know the all ins and outs, but below is my understanding of it - apologies if there are any errors.


At the moment there isn't a really role called physiologist in the HSE. Instead we have cardiac technicians and respiratory & sleep technicians. Then there are also neurophysiology technicians, vascular technicians, audiology technicians, urology technicians etc.

Cardiac technicians do ECGs, echos, cardiac stress tests, BP monitoring, and also support cardiologists with more invasive procedures like catheterisation and pacemakers.

Respiratory technicians do various different lung function tests like spirometry, helium dilutions, testing responses to some respiratory drugs etc. These tests would be for monitoring patients with known respiratory diseases, for diagnosis, and sometimes for other patients for example pre-surgery. Depending on the hospital, respiratory technicians often also work as sleep technicians. This involves sleep studies (monitoring someone's breathing, brain activity etc) and often CPAP ( a treatment for people with a condition called sleep apnoea).

Neurophysiologists run tests to measure electrical activity in the brain and nervous system, and vascular technicians would measure things like blood flow and artery size, audiology technicians do all sorts of different hearing tests and hearing aid monitoring, urology technicians measure renal function etc etc.

As far as I know, the only way to train for these jobs is through the Clinical Measurement degree in DIT. That degree has been around for years in various guises and it used to be that you could do it part time while training on the job, but I think that now it is the main entry route (although as I said, I'm out of the area so open to correction on that one). Maybe if you did that degree in UU you could find your way into a job in Ireland, that would make sense - but I have no idea, you would want to really check that out thoroughly. Also, if the degree is paid for by the NHS then presumably the small print says you have to work for them for a while?

In terms of pay and conditions, look up the HSE payscales but using the word technician instead of physiologist. Like any public service job there have been paycuts and recruitment freezes and all the rest.


Measurement technicians work as part of the allied health end of hospitals - so kind of similar to dieticians, physios, OTs etc. However, a big difference (in my eyes anyway) is that the majority of the work in the technician jobs is in testing and monitoring, rather than treatment. So a doctor sends a patient to you (mixture of outpatients and inpatients) for a test, you run the test, and then you send the results back to the doctor.

What that means (in the area I worked in anyway) was that there wasn't a huge amount of continuity - you would spend 30 minutes or an hour or whatever with the patient and then send them on their way, and never see them again or know what happened to them, whether they got better or not etc. So there isn't the same degree of caring and treatment as in other medical roles, and you usually don't have the responsibility of making clinical decisions as much as other jobs. That could be a good or a bad thing, just depends what you want. And it's not to say that in some cases you don't become involved in the caring team for a patient, just that in general you are doing relatively routine testing as support for the medics who are treating and making the decisions.

In a lot of places the jobs are a fairly standard Monday to Friday 9-5, with relatively predictable days when you know pretty much what you're going to be doing all day. Sleep technicians do night shifts sometimes. And obviously in bigger hospitals there would be shift work to cover inpatients.

So I think it depends why you want to go into medicine. The technician jobs do have a lot of patient contact (in that you could test 10 or 15 or 20 different patients in a day), but you don't tend to build relationships with patients in quite the same way doctors or nurses or physios or OTs might, because you don't see them as often. In general you don't make a huge amount of clinical decisions, you do what you are asked to do by doctors or surgeons. But that's not to say that you don't 'make a difference'. If someone comes in for a sleep study or a cardiac echo or something and is unwell and nervous and scared, and you can put them at their ease, help them through the test, and send them off feeling a bit more relaxed - well that can be really satisfying. You just don't have the 'life or death' aspect which medics or paramedics might sometimes have - although there can be a lot of routine mundane work those jobs too, we just don't see it on TV.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that if you want to go into medicine because you like the idea of the frontline and the potential drama and treating really sick people to make them better, then the technician jobs mightn't suit you (and that's not a criticism of either job or people who are attracted to them, it's just an idea). But if you like chatting to new patients all the time, have a relatively scientific approach to things (so that you do all the tests properly), are happy with relatively repetitive work and don't mind being part of the bigger pitcure rather being the face of it, then do investigate it a bit more.

Apologies for the long essay, wasn't planned! Hope that helps.

FairytaleGirl

Thank you for that awesome reply.

In the UK, you can work as a technician without a degree - its a different job altogether.
Do you know what the career progression is? You can work right up to consultant level in the North/UK, which is a Band 8 job.

Larianne

I'd say contact the course director to find out exactly where you can work once you qualify.

I'd also suggest that you get some work experience in the area if you can. I got to see lung function testing done while on placement, and for me, it would be a very boring and monotonous job. If you're enquiring about medicine or paramedic type jobs, I don't think there would be enough action for you as a respiratory technician.

StudentC

Hi again

Regarding progresion etc - I don't know the details of that, but from what I remember there's a scale which goes from basic grade to senior grade to clinical grade. But overall the work stays more or less the same at each level. Your responsibility increases and you might perform a slightly wider range of clinical duties, but I think alot of the increased responsability is more the managerial side of it.

Similarly, I know very little about the UK system. However, I wouldn't underestimate the similarities between technician in ROI and physiologist in the UK - at least as far as reading the basic descriptions on that NHS link you posted. As far as i can see from it, physiologists in the UK do all the testing, which is basically the same job? I can't immediately see anything on the NHS bit about technicians (I didn't look very hard) - perhaps they are actually technical staff, working with the equipment? I don't know at all so won't feed you lies! But I would be interested to find out what a consultant respiratory physiologist does though - where the scope is for consultant-level skills and responsibilities, as comapred to a medically-trained consultant in respiratory medicine. If you put up links to the NHS info, maybe we can help you interpret it.

Larianne wrote: »

I'd say contact the course director to find out exactly where you can work once you qualify.

I'd also suggest that you get some work experience in the area if you can. I got to see lung function testing done while on placement, and for me, it would be a very boring and monotonous job. If you're enquiring about medicine or paramedic type jobs, I don't think there would be enough action for you as a respiratory technician.

I would agree and disagree with Larianne on this. "not enough action for you as a respiratory technician" is basically a good summary of what I said - it's a job with alot of routine and not a massive amount of responsibility or clinical care. That's why I didn't stay in the job, it didn't suit me at all.

But, I think rather than say that you should train as a doctor because there is more action there, maybe you need to take a step back and think about what sort of job you want, rather than just the title? Do you actually want that 'action'? So what sort of skills do you want, what sort of responsibility, what level of committment to training, what job security, what sort of hours do you want to work etc etc.

I suspose what I'm saying is do you actually know what it is about medicine that attracts you? Because that might help you to work out whether the allied health roles and support jobs would alos be an option, or not be exciting enough!

(Completely agree with Larianne about ringing UU course director, also the DIT one. Work experience might be tricky, but if you try hard enough you'll get something - even if it's just a day here and there)

StudentC

Also, for paramedic jobs, take yourself over to the emergency services forum on Boards. Loads of threads there about recruitment to the ambulance services.

From what I've read there - in a nutshell, yes, it is really difficult to get into. Particularly with cuts all over the place. Like anything if you really really wanted to (and had the aptitude) you could get there, but go in with your eyes open.