Chief Medical Physicist of the Australian Capital Territory, Sean Geoghegan (@SeanGeoghegan) joined RealScientists in November. Sean began his week tweeting from the Engineering and the Physical Sciences in Medicine Conference in Wellington and despite having to overcome a temporary disability, it sounds like it might have been worth it!
Good morning everyone. Just getting myself ready for the day. Travelling alone with a broken ankle (first time for me) is slowing me down.
— realscientists (@realscientists) November 8, 2015
My broken ankle is a result of a birthday party accident involving children and paintballs – they got me! It's slowing me down at #EPMS2015
— realscientists (@realscientists) November 8, 2015
Sean also covered many aspects of the implementation of technology in medicine, and the difficulties of doing science with human participants.
This is one big lesson for physicists in medicine – you can't repeat an experiment if a patient is involved – it has to be right first go
— realscientists (@realscientists) November 9, 2015
The conference also revealed some rather interesting case studies in medical physics…
Found this one at #EPSM2015 – another example of why #MedPhys gets called on and the variety of work – for what?! pic.twitter.com/8pAzLO1Vq1
— realscientists (@realscientists) November 9, 2015
But Sean has been around, and with his experience, he’s not surprised by anything anymore!
I remember dealing with radioactive fecal contamination – sometimes the #MedPhys job is challenging but you're the one trained for it
— realscientists (@realscientists) November 9, 2015
Sean kindly completed our post-curation survey, so here he is in his own words:
In general terms, how did you find your week as a curator?
Overall pretty good, although at times I felt that I was tweeting into a vacuum. My physical limitation with a broken ankle meant that I could not get around to do as much as I had wanted on the week – I found the physical act of tweeting tiring from the various positions in which I sat/stood. So apart from physically demanding (a surprise) I found it overall a good experience.
It can be a shock talking to so many. Did you find the sudden rush of interactions (good and bad) daunting?
No – I find public speaking and public presentations fairly enjoyable to do. A handful of trolls at the end but easy to avoid by ignoring them.
What were the highlights? Were there any lowlights?
A good conversation on Saturday about careers in science was a highlight. Another was the surprised response from some to the concept that a poster is a valid scientific communication tool.
Lowlights – the vacuum and lack of engagement at times. The trolls are expected and part of it so no lowlight there.
Is there anything you wanted to get out of / do on the RS account that you didn’t manage to fit in?
I wanted to show some of the work we do in the clinic, but I couldn’t physically get there on the Friday.
Did you have a plan? If so, did you stick to it?
Yes I had a plan and I stuck to it fairly well – the plan was essentially made for me by the conference schedule and commitments. I didn’t manage to stick to the plan because it was physically too ambitious – I didn’t get through all of the trade area of the conference and it took twice as long as I allowed.
Do you have any tips or advice for future RS curators?
Have a plan, write some tweets ahead of time for the first day or more so that you can get off to a good start. Don’t stick to the plan if something interesting pops up – try to share your experience and explain why something excites you.
What other people or accounts should people follow if they enjoyed your tweets this week?
@ACPSEM, @Psbasran, @TargetingCancer, @sandraturner49, @Geoff_Barbaro
Thanks once again Sean from all of us here at RealScientists HQ. If you missed anything from his week, the tweets are all collated at the following link.
