News
2011 Certificate Exam Study Day
AAPT member Ben Deakin reflects on the study day, which was held on October 2nd in the Gordon Musuem, London.
The day started 09.00 at the Gordon Museum, London. We began in the lecture theatre where Amy and I gave an introduction to the day and ourselves. Everyone took turns to introduce themselves and then we invited James Lowell to give a talk.
James started by saying that he was really pleased to see everybody and that its great to see trainee's caring about the profession and wanting to become the future of the job and AAPT.
At 10.00 we started our first subject - Anatomy and Physiology. We started by learning the Musculo-skeletal system going from head to toe. We then moved onto the Brain, Heart, Lungs, Liver ect with the help of James, Zoe and Marios. At the end of every segment we would take it in turns to ask questions to the group who would answer back. At 12.00 we had a short break, time out for a quick catch up and to get to know each other better.
At 12.30 we returned to learn about Health & Safety in the Mortuary which consisted of COSHH, Health & Safety Acts, Infectious Diseases & Agents, Disinfection & Hazard Categories. Zoe started the session by asking us all if/what we knew about COSHH which lead into a interactive discussion about what it is and what else falls under COSHH. We then moved onto Health & Safety Acts which we learnt about 'RIDDOR’ and talking about Standard Operating Procedures, it was very interesting to find out how other Mortuaries do things differently. After that we moved onto Infective Diseases, Agents and Disinfection, finding out what Categories certain diseases full under, how to identify the diseases (the ones you can see), what precautions you take to protect yourself and others that have interaction with the deceased.
As everyone was so involved in the session we didn't break until 14.30 but once we returned from lunch we all decided to finish off the day by walking around the museum looking at all the fascinating specimens. At 16.30 Bill (The Curator) offered to do one of his talks "101 things to do about death". Bill's talk was both very informative and funny, certainly a must see. We finished the day at 18.00.
It was a fantastic and informative day. Thanks to Zoe Rutherford, Marios Karseras, and James Lowell, who volunteered to help and support us for the day following the announcement at Conference. Thanks to Bill Edwards for allowing us use of the museum and the The AAPT for the sponsorship and especially to all the trainee's that attended, without you this day would not have been such a success.
We have received very good feedback with some constructive criticism that has been noted and will be taken in to consideration for next time. I would like to say a very special thank you to the newly wedded Amy Clarke for the joint effort with myself because without talking to each other and realising we both felt the same we wouldn’t of been able to organise the very first and certainly not the last AAPT trainee study day.
Ben Deakin
AAPT Student member