Profile

I live in Edinburgh, Scotland with my girlfriend Ann. She is also a doctor, although she works in a different hospital to me, so I don’t get told off at work as well as at home. I like going for runs in the hills near my house and playing squash. I play for a squash team call the “lab rats” with a group of people who all work in laboratories similar to mine.

I love rap music, particularly from the 1980-1990s, although some of the newer stuff is also excellent. I read books whenever I get time – my favourite author is Haruki Murakami. I have also recently bought an x-box because of the lockdown. So any games recommendations would be much appreciated!

My pronouns are he/him.

Neurosurgeons are doctors who treat patients who have diseases affecting their brain, or their spine. As surgeons, the main way that we try to help people is by doing operations. These can range from removing tumours, or stopping bleeding. Lots of the patients we see come in as emergency and this can happen any time – night or day!

As a researcher, I spend time collecting information about patients and studying this to see if we can understand why some patients are sicker than others after brain injury. I also perform experiments in a laboratory.

A day in neurosurgery

06:00 – My alarm goes off. I get up, shower and have breakfast. I read the news and my emails whilst getting going and reply to anything urgent.

0700 – I cycle in to work. The hospital is across town and in summer it is a lovely ride past the Edinburgh meadows

07:30 – I arrive, change into surgical scrubs and head up to the ward for the doctors who were on-call over night to tell me about whats been going on.

08:00 – We do a “ward round”. For this we walk around the ward as a team with doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists and see all the patients. We make sure that people are doing well and identify anything new that needs to be done – for example requesting brain scans. If a patient is due to go to have an operation today, now is a chance to double check that everything is ready to go

09:30-17:00 – Operating theatre: we will do planned surgeries for patients. Neurosurgical operations can range from lasting two hours to all day and even into the night. Depending on what operations people need, we try to schedule a mix of short and long surgeries. The consultant neurosurgeon is in charge and sometimes if they specialise in a particular area of neurosurgery, we may be mostly doing surgeries in a particular type of neurosurgery. For example: tumors, spine, blood vessels, children. Between operations you often need to run up to the ward or clinics to see patients who come by to speak to a doctor or to check the results of tests requested in the morning. There isn’t always time for lunch!

17:00-19:00 – Evening checks: after a long day operating you head back to the ward, check that the patients who had operations today are doing fine, and have a cup of tea. Its a time to catch up with the other junior doctors who have been on the ward and make sure that any issues arising during the day have been sorted and that all of the patients on the ward are safe. Now is a good time to meet up with patients and their families if they are waiting for surgery to discuss plans and answer questions.

19:00-19:30 – cycle home

19:30 – cook dinner: I love cooking and find this is helpful to relax in the evenings. I chat with my girlfriend, who is also a doctor, about our days.

21:00 – I usually have a few bits of research work that need done: analysing and writing up the results of science is time consuming but very important. If I have enough energy I often try and do this for an hour or so. If not, it can wait until I have a dedicated day for doing research.

A day in the laboratory

07:30 – wake up, emails breakfast: as I don’t need to be in early to do ward rounds I usually take a lie in!

08:30 – cycle in to the lab

09:00 – Arriving at the lab we sometimes have lab meetings, where the whole team of researchers, technicians and research assistants meet to discuss our work. Usually one person presents some of their work so that we can all think about it and give our thoughts. In the lab that I work there is a diverse team of 15 people. This includes our group leader (or “principal investigator” – PI). Our leader is a professor who has lots of experience and can help guide the experiments that we are doing and solves problems when things aren’t working. Some of us, including me, are students working on research to complete a PhD. This is a big research project that we design and carry out. We have to write a book on this afterwards called a “thesis”. Others in the group have already finished a PhD and are scientists who work in a laboratory conducting experiments, are combination medical and science doctors, or are specialists in data analysis using high tech computers.

10:00 – Cell culture. A lot of the work that I do involves growing brain cells in plastic dishes. These cells need a lot of care and so I will go check on my cells and feed them. Sometimes I will need to prepare new cells by extracting them from brains, and sometimes I will need to run an experiment on cells that are ready. For me, this involves squirting blood onto them to simulate bleeding into the brain.

12:00 – set up some analyses. I use various techniques to study how these cells respond to blood. One is called reverse transcription, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). For this I need to extract genetic material from my cells and then carefully pipette it into a plate made up of very small test tubes. I place this in a machine that will then identify what genes are being used by cells responding to blood.

14:00 – while this is running I go get lunch. Scientists work closely in teams with people of different skills. I will often meet up with other scientists to discuss our work and how we can work together to help each other out to make our science better.

15:00 – Start staining some brain tissue. Another technique that I use is to take very very thin slices of brains that have had bleeding. We put these on glass microscope slides and then expose them to different chemicals. These can be used to make particular particles turn different colours or to glow. This is useful as these particles now show up when look at them down a microscope. This can allow us to see in a real brain what is happening after bleeding. If we have done an experiment where we try and change what happens after a bleed we can compare these bits of brain against those that have just a bleed and see how this has affected the particle we measured.

17:00 – Data analysis. I tend to spend the evenings doing analysis of data and writing up the results. If some experiments from the day are still running on machines in the lab, I will need to check on these from time to time and make sure everything is turned off at the end of the day

18:30 – 20:00 – Squash training/matches, depending on the day I often go to train at squash. This is a racket sport where you hit a ball against a wall. I play in a league at the university and sometimes our team of people from various laboratories play against other teams.

20:00 – head home, cook dinner, relax