Careers talks are an inspiring way to highlight the diverse and exciting careers on offer in pathology to young people, particularly secondary school students. They’re also relatively easy compared to other more ‘hands-on’ and practical engagement activities. This set of videos and accompanying written materials have been developed to help facilitate careers talks in schools by pathologists and scientists.
Presented by Dr Rachael Liebmann (RCPath Vice-President for Communications 2017 – 20), the video resources include a full length film of a careers talk Dr Liebmann gave to secondary school students in March 2019, as well as shorter ‘how-to’ videos that provide practical advice on organising and delivering a careers talk on pathology. The videos and accompanying materials also give ideas on structure and content of your presentation, and what other elements you can include, such as interactive demonstrations and props.
You can download a careers presentation template below. Note that the template is not exactly the same as the presentation shown by Dr Liebmann in the video, and there are some additional slides on the resource page you could add in for a shorter talk.
The videos
The links to each of the 4 videos below are the best place to start when you want to plan a careers talk on pathology for school students. If you’re not a pathologist but would like to run a talk on pathology careers for secondary school students, you could show the full length video of Dr Liebmann’s talk, or you could get in touch with the RCPath public engagement team and ask for their help in finding a pathologist in your area who would be willing to give a talk.
Videos
- Welcome video
- Planning your talk with a school
- Top tips for a successful careers talk
- Pathology Careers Talk - video of Dr Rachael Liebmann presenting at Eltham College in March 2019
Accompanying guidance notes
Presentation
Download the careers talk PowerPoint template below. This includes slides covering an introduction to pathology and careers information related to histopathology, haematology, microbiology and chemical pathology. We have included notes on what you might say alongside each slide. The presentation in full is 20 slides long, with about 3 slides for each of the four main specialties.
There are also slides on what skills are useful in pathology, and a link to our video ‘Journey of a Biopsy’ to help ‘paint a picture’ of what happens in a busy cellular pathology lab, and all of the people involved in getting a diagnosis for a patient.
You may wish to customise the presentation with slides that give more information about your own career, and area of work. We have aimed the presentation at a secondary school audience but they can easily be adapted to cater for older or younger students.
For a shorter talk you could summarise pathology in your introduction with just one or two slides and we have provided a single ‘Setting the scene’ slide below as a separate download so you can consider this option.
You may also wish to replace each of the skills slides for each specialty with a slide or two on ‘core skills for pathologists’ at an appropriate point. We have provided two slides below that can use to help communicate this if you don’t wish to go through each speciality in turn; one slide that lists core skills for pathologists generally, and one slide that is entitled ‘Aptitudes for patient-facing specialties’.