LabMed webinars for National Pathology Week 2026
National Pathology Week takes place from 2-8 November 2026, with this year's theme, 'Welcome to the Lab', celebrating the people, science and work behind pathology services.
As a member of the Pathology Alliance, LabMed is supporting this year's campaign with three free webinars. The sessions are aimed at students, graduates, trainee scientists and anyone interested in finding out more about laboratory medicine. Each webinar will cover a different aspect of the profession, from the work carried out by laboratory scientists and the different routes into the field to the role of diagnostic testing and quality assurance in patient care.
A day in the lab
Wednesday 4 November 2026 | 6-7pm
This webinar will give an insight into the day-to-day work of clinical scientists and the different career routes into laboratory medicine, including the Scientist Training Programme (STP), postgraduate study and routes developed through hospital experience. The speakers will share their experiences of entering the profession and talk about the work involved in their roles, including handling clinical queries and interpreting critical results.
The discussion will bring together scientists working across immunology, biochemistry and microbiology:
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Georgia Pretlove-Smith is a senior clinical scientist at Mid and South Essex NHS Trust. She completed the STP in Nottingham and now works at Broomfield Hospital.
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Eleanor Finnie is a clinical scientist with the UK Health Security Agency at Birmingham Heartlands.
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Francesca Ryan-Beswick is a principal clinical scientist at Royal Stoke University Hospital
Pathology tests: the good, the bad and the ugly
Thursday 12 November 2026 | 6-7pm
Reliable test results are essential to clinical decision-making. This session will explore what makes a pathology test reliable, the limitations of different testing methods and the challenges that can arise when testing takes place outside traditional laboratory settings.
Speakers will share examples from their work, covering several areas of laboratory medicine:
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Penny Cliff, who leads national surveillance of antibiotic resistance in sexually transmitted infections at the UKHSA's STI Reference Laboratory, will discuss gonorrhoea testing and compare online and private testing services with testing carried out in sexual health clinics.
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Rav Sodi, consultant clinical biochemist and head of department at Mid and South Essex NHS Trust, will look at prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, explaining why levels can rise in both benign and malignant disease and why population screening is not currently recommended.
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Tim Woolley, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Inuvi Diagnostics, will discuss direct-to-consumer testing and examine whether finger-prick and upper-arm samples provide results comparable with venous blood samples.
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Bernie Croal, consultant chemical pathologist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, president of the Royal College of Pathologists and former LabMed president, will join Martin Myers, co-clinical lead for the NHS England pathology Getting It Right First Time programme, for further discussion.
Welcome to careers in External Quality Assurance (EQA)
Wednesday 18 November 2026 | 6-7pm
External Quality Assurance (EQA) plays an important role in helping laboratories monitor the accuracy and reliability of their results. This webinar will introduce EQA and explore how it supports quality in laboratory medicine.
Using HbA1c testing in diabetes as an example, the session will look at how quality failures can affect patients and how quality assurance supports point-of-care testing. It will also follow a clinical case to show how scientists bring together different pieces of evidence to understand a patient's results.