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Biomedical Science Day round up

Biomedical Science Day round up
17 June 2020
Despite the lockdown and social distancing, our members stood tall and celebrated Biomedical Science Day with great spirit and professionalism

Biomedical Science Day 2020 was an outstanding success. We were amazed by the great spirit and professionalism of our members. Due to social distancing and the nationwide lockdown, there were no laboratory tours or stands in foyers but that did not stop our innovative members from pulling out all the stops to take the public on virtual tours and provide informative videos. The digital celebrations went on all day - providing the public with ever greater clarity about the role of the profession #BehindEveryTest in the wider healthcare context. There was a sense of excitement and pride in laboratories across the UK, as our members rightly celebrated their efforts on the frontline of COVID-19 testing and beyond. 

On social media, we encouraged our members to use the hashtags #BiomedicalScienceDay2020 and #AtTheHeartOfHealthcare to promote their activities. On Twitter, the hashtag #AtTheHeartOfHealthcare was used 2,966 times and was in the top 10 UK Twitter trends from 8.30am all day, peaking at No. 4. 

 

IBMS President Allan Wilson kicked off the day with this message to our members:

Biomedical Science Day also earned the attention of some big Twitter accounts, including Arlene Foster - First Minister of Northern Ireland:

NHS England and NHS Improvement:

Dame Sue Hill:

 and Lord Bethell:


On BBC Radio 2, biomedical scientists received three shout outs throughout the day, and others, such as BBC Radio Manchester had IBMS member Helen George on to describe her vital role in healthcare and to explain about the awareness day.

Across the UK, communications teams in hospitals and university laboratories handed their social media accounts over to their pathology staff and allowed them to celebrate and inform their followers about the skills and expertise involved in their practice. We lost count of the amount of wonderful and informative videos and digital tours from our members who were doing social media takeovers for their Trusts and Hospitals. 

On Facebook there were lots of messages of support from Trusts, charities and other healthcare pages and our online community were active and posting pictures and videos for our competitions all day. Half a million people saw our posts, including our photo gallery, where we have compiled a large amount of the photos and competition entries. If you had your photo taken on the day, it's likely you will have ended up in there (or will do in the coming days).

In Scottish Parliament a motion was submitted by MSP Gil Paterson to ask that:

“Parliament recognises Biomedical Science Day on 11 June 2020: considers that, in the UK, biomedical scientists and laboratory staff play a key role in delivering high-quality pathology services that are the backbone of the NHS, including screening for, reporting on and monitoring all diseases and viruses: further understands that healthcare laboratories are involved in over 70% of diagnoses in the NHS and handle more than one billion samples every year, and thanks biomedical scientists, clinical scientists and laboratory staff for their work at the heart of healthcare.”

The motion was supported by 16 other MSPs, but it is not yet clear whether it was agreed or not.

Here are some of the most popular tweets from the day:

We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our members who were involved in celebrating Biomedical Science Day 2020. It fills us with pride to see so many experts across the four nations rising up and showing everybody just how skilled and valuable you truly are.

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