I grew up in the care system, living in a children's home until I was about 13, and then with my foster parents. I attended an all-girls secondary school before going off to complete a further education course in community care. I then went on to do nursing training and qualified as a theatre nurse. I was an operating theatre nurse for around 12 years and I worked in Kent, St Thomas’ Hospital in London and in Brighton. After leaving my job as a nurse, I went back to education and completed a media degree at the University of Brighton. I then worked for Northbrook College, which is a further education college for another 12 years, helping students and staff to use computer programmes, before coming to BSMS.
What brought me to BSMS was, I wanted to do something that involved not just media. I wanted to do something else and incorporate both medicine and media together. I have always been interested in technology. My friend had a computer shop, and we used to build computers together after dinner. When I worked at a local FE college with the students studying fashion and communication design, I taught them how to use computer programmes, such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere, along with other software. During my time there, I built a video streaming server with library resources. That's when I started programming and I really enjoyed it, building websites and making e-learning resources and induction courses. I saw that there was a learning technologist role that had come up with BSMS and it ticked all the boxes, and so here I am.
My Job description states: ‘Design and create digital learning resources, in collaboration with academic and clinical faculty, and manage their deployment and maintenance to enhance teaching and learning across the school’. My role specifically involves things like media, I film video interviews and OSCEs and edit them. I have created videos for the clinical skills team, which may involve creating clinical skills scenarios or filming a clinical skills session so that the students can learn from them. When I started at BSMS, I began creating web-based e-tutorials and mobile apps. This involved end of life and stroke modules, which were little courses that the students could do. I also created the first iteration of SmartDrug and the Anatomy Laboratory Interface App.
The anatomy app came about because the anatomy team wanted to go digital instead of using books and paper in the lab, so I built them a web interface. When it came to the pandemic, the anatomy team had created a lot of videos to enhance student learning and so I created an app for them to replace the web interface and make their videos and content more accessible. I figured that during the pandemic when the students couldn't get in the lab, they could still watch the anatomy videos and view bespoke content and I think that's been quite successful. When I designed the anatomy app, I decided to draw everything myself, which I enjoyed because I like to draw using Illustrator as a hobby. So, I must admit my role has probably evolved because of the kind of experience I have, creating these resources.
I'm currently building a GP attendance app for Year’s 1 and 2 external placements. This is so that the students can record where they've been working on their phones. It’ll also have some access to clinical skills videos that they can look at for revision and perhaps some wider university resources too. I’m also building an administration backend for the school office. At the moment, they're using really old technologies, so I'm revamping their technological capabilities.
The challenge is what motivates me about my role. I like the fact that it's challenging and I like to set myself challenges. Everything I do, I seem to challenge myself more and more. It can be quite tricky sometimes but the end result is always worth it!!
I enjoy creating, particularly making something that works and that is useful for the medical school, and also for our students. In some ways I quite like being behind the scenes. I don't know many of the students, but I have experience working with young people so I understand their motivations and I like the fact that people are using something that I've created.
I would quite like to continue the way I am, doing more media and continuing to make and maintain apps for the medical school. Especially because I think that we don't have enough of that. Now that I've started app building, I realise that buying prepaid apps is not necessarily cost-effective. It's a very expensive business and I think you could probably do some of that in-house. I also wouldn't mind having more people in our department, having a bigger team might give more scope for staff progression.
I think changing my life has been my biggest achievement. I was a nurse for 12 years and I’ve been doing this for several years now too. I've got two degrees, so going from nursing to technology and now to BSMS where I can combine my experience of both has meant that my life has really come full circle.
In my spare time, I like to play around with media bits. I make Christmas cards every year and this year I’m arranging a winter exhibition in one of the restaurants near where I live. I’ve had exhibitions before one of them for a photography project on doors. I spent a lot of time taking photos of doors which became a book. I’ve also got an allotment so I’ve created some food labels for the different jams and chutneys that I’ve made and am also producing a book for this too. This exhibition however is going to be about my cards.
I found Nina Simone quite inspiring. As a woman of colour myself, I quite liked her stance in America when it was the civil rights movement expressing her views with music. I just think standing up for yourself or just letting people know your feelings is inspirational. The people that really inspire me are people that do things for other people to make their lives better.
The biggest challenge that I’ve had to overcome was when I had a long illness. I had it for a few years and at that time, I didn't think I would ever have a proper job again. It was hard but it forced me to change my career path and it brought me to where I am now.
The advice I would give my younger self would be to maybe take a different approach to my career. I would probably have done art, especially designing before medicine because that was my first love. But then again, I quite like medicine too. I wish that I could have used art and design earlier, as it is quite a good medium for expression. I think we as medics are doing more of it now and you'll be quite surprised about how many medics have got artistic tendencies. I think that for me that would be what I would probably say to my younger self. I would say do whatever you want to do and do it as best as you can, just approach it differently.
The most important thing about women is that they have to believe in themselves. I think that speaking up and letting your voice be heard is very important for women. Women need to have a voice and we don't always have that. Sometimes women aren’t always listened to, or they don't speak up. But I think that's what needs to happen.