Radiography students have provided a unique insight to the world of medical imaging by creating a virtual careers workshop for prospective recruits.
Inside Out is an outreach project to raise the profile of diagnostic radiography, led by Ismat Khan, a third-year diagnostic radiography student at the University of Cumbria.
Ismat came up with the idea early last year after winning a place on the Student Leadership Programme, known as the #150leaders scheme, run by the Council of Deans of Health.
The project went through several format changes over the year due to Covid-19 restrictions, finally coming to fruition in March as a series of filmed workshop-like sessions that will now be collated as an online module.
Ismat said: ‘Hopefully it will all come together like an e-learning module, which will feel as if you are experiencing a virtual careers fair. When the website goes live we will send it out to schools and also plan some actual in-person sessions at the university.’
In partnership with the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Blended Learning Team, Ismat led and directed the filming day with Catherine Lamoon, the trust’s medical photographer/videographer.
They worked with three groups of up to four student volunteers, who were filmed presenting Ismat Khan (centre) with students from the University of Cumbria different aspects of diagnostic radiography, discussing their own student journeys into the degree and their progression since embarking on the course.
Ismat’s aim was to show all aspects of radiography from the inside out and to raise awareness of the huge variety of work within the profession.
‘There is so much evolution going on and no limit to what you can do. It’s so exciting, there’s just so much in this role,’ she explained.
Ismat said her clinical tutor, Thomas Welton, and her leadership coach, SoR officer Gill Harrison, had been instrumental in enabling her to complete the project during the pandemic.
‘I could not have done it without them,’ she said. ‘Now I would like to make it a national resource that is shared with other universities.
'I’d like it to be something that the next students coming through can take forward.’