Saving lives - Hassan's story

My name's Mohammed Hasan. I'm 13 years old. I'm in year 8 and I study maths, English, all the normal stuff, science, arts. About three years ago, my back started hurting. Then my walking started to get terrible and terrible. Eventually, they pushed for a scan. They found I had a tumour in my neck. Christie's really good. It helped me so much. I met so many wonderful people. So, David, what is your job and how did you get into it? My job is called a Superintendent Proton Radiographer. My role is to manage the team that deliver the proton therapy and decide whether the treatment's going in the right place or not and then help the team to deliver it. I got into it, I went to university for two years to a postgraduate diploma in radiotherapy and then I did further study to specialise into proton therapy. Proton therapy is a revolutionary treatment, really. It's a type of radiation we use to kill cancer cells. We can directly target them precisely on the tumour. Therapeutic radiographers, you need to be good at two things, which is you need a very sort of technical, scientific mind, but then you also need to care for people as well. We have a close relationship with the nurses, with the doctors, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, and we all work together to provide the sort of care pathway for that particular patient and make sure all their needs are attended to. What is your job and how did you get into your job? So, I'm a paediatric nurse and I got into my job through doing a degree for three years in paediatric nursing. There's other ways of getting into the profession. Now they have a nurse associate path, which is a bit more vocational. On a day-to-day basis, we'll see the children before their treatment. We might do things like their bloods. We'll do their observations and check their temperature, their heart rate and their blood pressure. A lot of the time, at the end of the day, you go home and you can think, you've made a difference to somebody else's life.