Courses & Conferences to Attend
I attended the National Society for PKU in 2016 and presented there, although this was largely for personal reasons as I have PKU myself! I also attended the ABCD conference and gave a presentation there in 2018, but other than that, I hadn’t been to many conferences or courses.
Chemical Pathology is a broad church, so it depends on what your interests within that are! My primary interest is inherited metabolic disease, so the British Inherited Metabolic Disease Group conference or the Society for the Study of Inborn Errors of Metabolism (which is usually abroad) are the two big ones.
If it's diabetes, then either Diabetes UK or the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD) conferences. Heart UK is good if you like lipids. There are also general biochemistry conferences, such as MedLab UK, which are very useful, particularly for those sitting FRCPath exams, but because these are so specialist, interviewers won’t have expected you to attend any of these before starting as a Chemical Pathology SpR.
There aren’t really any specific courses for Chemical Pathology, but if you’re really keen, there is plenty of eLearning available on both inherited metabolic disease and laboratory biochemistry. At the interview, they expect you to have a good basic understanding of electrolyte disturbances and endocrinology (particularly testing for endocrine abnormalities), so I recommend brushing up on those prior to the interview.
If you’ve done IMT, this shouldn’t be too tricky. I was also asked about clinical governance and the staffing structure of the lab, so it's also important to have a good idea about this – the best way to gain an understanding of this is to do a taster week.
