• Question: How many lives have you saved at work through finding cancerous cells and cures?

    Asked by ashlea to Anna, Jonathan, Samantha, Sam on 1 Jul 2012. This question was also asked by owainmcdonald24.
    • Photo: Angharad Davies

      Angharad Davies answered on 1 Jul 2012:


      In my job now I look for infection not cancer.

      Before when I worked as a general medical doctor, I discovered many patients with cancer (but I didn’t do the lab tests myself). Then I sent them to see a special cancer doctor to be treated. So I can’t claim to have saved any lives this way, but hopefully I put a few people on the right track.

    • Photo: Sam Chilka

      Sam Chilka answered on 1 Jul 2012:


      My job involves looking at cell and tissue samples from patients, most of the time to try to find cancer cells and tell what type of cancer it might be. I then give this information to the doctors treating the patients. They use this information to plan the best treatment for the patient, In my career I’ve probably looked at thousands of tissue samples. Many of these patients will then have been cured by the treatment they get. Some patients can’t be cured no matter what treatment is tried. It’s important to remember that if a life is saved, it’s never down to just one person. I work in a large team of people (doctors, nurses, laboratory staff, and others), all working to try to help patients. I play a small (but important) part in that team, but it’s team effort that saves lives.

    • Photo: Samantha Weaver

      Samantha Weaver answered on 2 Jul 2012:


      I don’t look for cancerous cells or cures but I do monitor levels of chemicals in the blood called ‘tumour markers’ which give us an idea of how well the treatment is working at reducing the cancer – we do thousands of these tests each week so that’s a lot of patients we are monitoring!

    • Photo: Jonathan Kay

      Jonathan Kay answered on 2 Jul 2012:


      I’ve never worked it out. Probably a few hundred. But not personally: everything I do is in teams, and they can be big and complicated.

      Thanks for making me think about it.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 2 Jul 2012:


      The honest answer is I don’t know! In this line of work you don’t normally remember if or when you get something right. You always look back on your mistakes though.

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