Sarah Smith is the Education, Training and Development Lead for the Department of Laboratory Medicine at NHS Lothian and also the Healthcare Science Professional Lead for NHS Lothian.
Sarah is a HCPC registered Biomedical Scientist who began her career in 1990 with Edinburgh and South East Scotland Blood Transfusion Service as a trainee biomedical scientist. She attained registration in 1993 after attaining BSc Life Science degree at Napier University. She went on to attain PgD Biomedical Science at Caledonian University the following year.
During her time at Edinburgh and South East Scotland Blood Transfusion Service Sarah was involved in the manufacture of blood and blood products, the testing of donors, the training of trainee biomedical scientists and the development of training guidance.
Sarah was promoted to Procurement Coordinator in 2000 with Alba Bioscience where she undertook further education to update her specialist knowledge in Blood Transfusion and gained a professional qualification in Blood Transfusion and Management.
Her role at Alba Bioscience involved the quality control of reagents being manufactured from blood and blood products, the design and development of red cell reagents, the recruitment of blood donors for product manufacture and educating the blood donors that were recruited as reagent donors.
Sarah came to her current post in 2007 as Education, Training And Development Lead for NHS Lothian Department of Laboratory Medicine where she has been responsible for all aspects of training and education.
In 2010, Sarah accepted a short term secondment to NHS Education for Scotland as the Healthcare Science Education Development Lead for Lothian and Borders developing education programmes and promoting the work of Healthcare Science.
Sarah was successul in attaining the role of Healthcare Science Professional Lead in 2016 and is chair of the local area healthcare science committee within NHS Lothian.
Sarah successfully attained her MSc Pathology (by research) in 2013 and is responsible for setting up the School of Health, Science and Technology