Welcome to my first Mediterm blog!

Welcome to my first blog!!

I’ve been thrust into the world of social media and blogging so thought it’s time I joined in and introduced myself!

I’m Nicola, I’m married with 3 children and live in Cheshire.  I had the opportunity to join Mediterm Training when my middle child was born – my choices were to continue in the NHS in my job as a ‘Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist’ working with Stroke Patients at The Royal Oldham Hospital, with a daily commute and little flexibility or leave the NHS and join forces with my mum who set up Mediterm 6 years earlier. The option of more flexible working to fit around the children and being my own boss was appealing and after much deliberation I jumped ship from the NHS and started working with my mum.

I had been surrounded by medical terminology throughout my career in the NHS and had fumbled my way through deciphering patient notes with the little bits of knowledge I picked up as I went along – I think a lot of the time I wrote down whatever terms sounded the most complicated to sound clever without having a clue what they meant!  There was no formal medical terminology training offered to us at university or during the 12 years I was in the NHS. I decided to complete the Level 3 AMSPAR/City and Guilds Certificate in Medical Terminology which, being online, meant I could study at a time which suited me and was thrilled to qualify with distinction 5 months later! I wish I’d have had this newfound knowledge during my Speech Therapy days, things would have made so much more sense!

Last year, I became company director as mum wanted to take a back step and play more golf! Whilst I miss my colleagues and patients from the NHS, I know I made the right decision to leave. The favourite part of my job is seeing the feedback come flooding in when results are announced, having a knowledge of medical terminology makes such a difference to so many people in their daily working lives, now we need to keep spreading awareness of what we do, I really do believe that anyone working in an admin role in healthcare needs a knowledge of the terms that surround them every day and the benefit of online medical terminology training means it’s accessible to anyone!