• Question: What's the hardest part of your job and how does it feel to operate on someone

    Asked by Nael??? to Paul, Mobeen, Laura, Jen, Greg on 7 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by Amberr??✨.
    • Photo: Greg Melia

      Greg Melia answered on 7 Mar 2016:


      I’m not a surgeon and have never operated on anyone, sorry! I think that’s the same for all the scientists in this zone.

      The hardest part of my job is trying to deal with uncertainty. There are always a lot of things that I don’t know, which can get frustrating at times.

    • Photo: Laura Haworth

      Laura Haworth answered on 7 Mar 2016:


      Greg is right- none of us operate. I have seen a number of operations but not performed any myself.

      Hardest part- trying to fit everything in to a day- I never seem to have a quiet day- there needs to be more hours in a day.

    • Photo: Paul O'Mahoney

      Paul O'Mahoney answered on 8 Mar 2016:


      I’ve never operated on anyone, but I can imagine it feels a bit odd the first time!

      The hardest part of my job is probably staying focused on one thing – there are so many interesting things to do!

    • Photo: Jen Lowe

      Jen Lowe answered on 8 Mar 2016:


      The hardest part of my job is probably the surprise urgent deadlines, and unpredictability of patient numbers-sometimes we’re really busy sometimes there are lulls in the workload and we all get to tidy our desk, write up our CPD record and continue with project work.
      I have never operated on anyone (but I did once pierce a friends ear at university) but have been in an operating theatre during many procedures.

    • Photo: Mobeen Ali

      Mobeen Ali answered on 15 Mar 2016:


      The hardest part is when an experiment doesn’t work and you have to try to fix it. I haven’t performed any operations either.

Comments