An interview with Adam Marzetti.
Adam Marzetti, Senior Cardiac Physiologist at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, won the AHCS sponsored award to recognise emerging leaders in healthcare science. Below, he reflects on the event and his career in healthcare science and cardiac physiology.
What did it mean to you to win the award to recognise emerging leaders?
Winning the award to recognise emerging leaders was truly heartwarming, and gave me a real sense of achievement. Its made me feel reassured that what I do as a leader does have an impact on my team and they can see the work and effort I put into my role, so has given me a morale boost as well, as working in healthcare can be hard, so getting this kind of achievement to give the morale boost has been quite inspiring.
How was your experience at the AHAwards event?
It was really inspiring to see so many hard working individuals at the awards event. Seeing all the diffeent types of work people are doing was eye-opening, as we often get silo’d into our own fields it can be easy to forget how much goes on outside our own specialties, so it was really inspiring to see all the different innovations in various fields. The atmosphere was so positive, it was great to network with different people and learn so much about different specialities, I really appreciated how hard everyone works and that was very obvious at the event.
What inspired you to pursue a career as a cardiac physiologist?
I actually was inspired to pursue this career when I was a patient myself. When I was 17-18 years old I was quite unwell myself, and was referred for en echocardiogram at my local hospital. I was chatting to the physiologist doing my scan at the time, it turned out she was the manager of the department and so asked if I was interested in sciences, which I was. She told me of a training oppurtunity coming up, at the time I wasn’t well enough to think about it, but when I got better, having undergone a diagnostic test within cardiology my interest was peeked. So I decided to apply for the training post. If i hadn’t undergone the echocardiogram, I wouldn’t have even known this was a career choice and so probably wouldn’t have chosen to study in this field.
What advice would to give to other emerging leaders within this field?
I would recommend that if there is something anyone feels really needs to change, or even has new ideas that can really challenge the barriers of your field, then speak to others that might already be doing it. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the wider network to get help, if you feel something within your department or field can be developed in a positive way, collaborate with others even outside your own trust to see how it could work. There is no need to be afraid of change.
How important do you think events such as these are in raising the profile of healthcare science professionals?
These events are really important to recognise the role in which healthcare science professionals play. Very often patients will see a physician, who are of course so important to healthcare, but so much of the patients journey will involve healthcare science professionals in some capacity, in some cases this will be a life-long relationship with the patient and the healthcare science role. Because of this, I think its truly valuable to recognise all that background work that goes on, as often the physicians couldn’t make their decisions without the output from the work we provide, and most importantly, without healthcare science professionals, patient care would really suffer with us all, and that deserves recognition.
Congratulations again to Adam on such a great achievement!
