Special thanks to Laura and her tutor Mrs Lufi, giving us the permission to share her experience at LIH.
Name of student: Laura Fuentes Gómez
Class: S5ESA
Period of work experience: 01/07/2019 – 05/07/2019
Name of institution: Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH)
Unit: Clinical Investigational & epidemiological Center (CIEC)
Name of school: European School of Luxemburg 1
Name of tutor: Mrs. Lufi
The Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) is a public biomedical research organization whose objective is to generate new knowledge on diseases mechanisms and develop preventive strategies, innovative therapies and clinical applications which will impact the health of Luxembourgish and European citizens.
The LIH was created in 2015 as a new structure resulting from the merger of the biomedical research institute “Centre de Recherche Public de la Santé” (CRP-Santé) and the research infrastructure and biobanking service provider Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg (IBBL).
The institute is composed of three large thematic departments and one biobank (the Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg, IBBL), which remains a clearly identified structure with management autonomy. The three departments reflect the research focuses of the institute: Infection and Immunity, Oncology, Population Health. Each one is headed by a scientific director. The departments are further sub-divided into units and groups with specific research scopes, led by junior and senior principal investigators. The institute has over 380 employees of more than 30 nationalities and produces more than 200 publications per year.
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I had a very flexible schedule (just like the actual researchers) to really get the idea of what it is to work as a researcher. The day started at 8 o´clock and finished between 15 and 18, depending on the daily assignments.
I did my work experience at the Clinical and Epidemiological Investigation Centre (CIEC), which is a research unit of the Population Health Department. It promotes and supports local projects and helps researchers to consolidate experimental findings through clinical research involving patients and healthy individuals.
I also visited other research units such as the Human Biomonitoring. The most important thing that I could grasp about the difference between these and the CIEC was the amount of lab work (which seemed more abundant in other units).
In the CIEC there were also other different jobs such as: nurses, data managers and clinical research managers.
The nurses are the only contact between a patient and the data they provide. Once a participant in a study has given them samples and data, that data is classified with a number to protect the privacy of the patient. The only one that can connect the number to the person is the nurse. Furthermore, the job of nurse requires two types of work: collecting the data and samples (contacting directly with the participant) and then putting this information in a computer and analysing it with the help of statisticians (computer work).
It was surprising to see how many different studies each nurse was handling, each of them requiring alliances with different organizations, either with a hospital (Parkinson’s disease study, Glioblastoma study, Hepatitis C study, Colorectal cancer study, etc), or with other organizations such as the Red Cross (Hepatitis C study).
Data managers do computer work, managing the data collected by the nurses, looking for faults, etc. Clinical research associates take care of anything that is budget, authorisation from hospitals or the Ethics committee, contracts between hospitals or institutions with sponsors, etc.
My tasks there were to pay attention, observe, listen, take notes, learn and ask questions when I was given the option. I also got a taste of what they do there, since they let me work in the laboratory supervised.
The coordinator, Jean-Yves Ferrand, was kind enough to organize a schedule, letting me attend a meeting in which the Immunity department explained how to use several lab materials, asking people who worked there to give a presentation explaining what they do, getting me doing lab work twice, and letting me follow various nurses to see what they do. It was a very exciting week, far from being monotone and following a routine.
Day 1: Introduction to the institute (its functions and departments), the clinical research (protocol, phases) and the Parkinson’s disease research they were conducting.
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Day 2: I learned how to use lab equipment, the role of statisticians in clinical research (design protocol, sample size and characteristics, questionnaire development, data analysis) and I did lab work in the Human Biomonitoring Research Unit. This consisted of a study that analysed the hair from Luxembourgish citizens to search for pesticides and what I had to do was to purify the hair from exterior substances and then pulverize the hair (all of this to prepare it for analysis).
Day 3: I experienced the work of a nurse, went to the hospital to see a patient participating in a study about Colorectal Cancer and saw the procedures to take before taking the blood, urine and hair samples (inform the participant of the study and what it is required from him or her). Then, I attended the same procedure with another study about Parkinson’s disease and saw not only how the sample recollecting is done, but also the various questionnaires about wellbeing and cognitive capacities the patient had to do.
Day 4: I learned about the role of the communication department in the LIH, and how important it is to promote an institute, to get participants, sponsors, future workers or just to expand the knowledge of science. I also did lab work in the Infection and Immunity department. There was another study in process about how many proteins our bodies can absorb from vegetables (through carotenoids) and on what it depends (apart from the amount one consumes) and I saw how they extracted the carotenoids from food matrices using various procedures and substances.
Day 5: I saw with detail the task each person in the CIEC had to do (Clinical Research Associate, Data Manager, Nurse, each one had different studies to work on) and other various studies the nurses had (Glioblastoma study, Hepatitis C study, Pseudarthrosis study, etc)
I was able to see a lot of different jobs done in the institute, not only related to the department where I was doing the work experience, but also others, such as social worker or statisticians. Everybody seemed to enjoy their job and there seemed to be a mutual understanding and respect between scientists.
Probably the most exciting and interesting part of the experience was the lab work I did with the Human Biomonitoring Research Unit. It surprised me the fact that the researchers actually let us do the purification of the hair they would later on analyse (it also stunned me the fact that it was a very extensive work, and after 4 hours we hadn’t even finished purifying the hair, not by any length analysed). I really enjoyed that you had to be precise, focused and perfect or the very small samples would be lost. Furthermore, being able to use different lab material was fascinating. I also found really interesting all the different studies I saw, how a protocol worked, and seeing the actual questionnaires they were using in real studies taking place now. It put a lot of perspective on how there are so many things one Research Unit can cover and on how you can search an infinite number of things in science.
As for what I did not find interesting, it´s more of what I found the less interesting but far from being boring. This being some specific jobs like: Clinical Research Associate or Data Manager.
This is a very tricky question, the answer would be lab work in both, because for one part I absolutely adored it, but on the other hand, it could also seem at times repetitive. I also liked very much when I was able to witness how a Parkinson’s study participant did the questionnaire about well-being and the cognitive tests (sniffing test, precision test, memory test, etc)
Apart from the fact that everyone seemed enthusiastic and happy to show us what they did and even let us participate in lab work sometimes, the fact that one only Research Unit like the CIEC could cover more than 10 completely different studies at the same time was mind-blowing to me. I had expected there to be 2 studies ongoing, but every nurse had between 1-3 different studies in hand.
It has far exceeded my expectations. To be honest, I had expected to feel a bit like a burden to the people that worked there, but they were all eager to explain everything we asked and even ask sometimes about what interested us to be able to give advice for the future if we decided to follow a similar career. Regarding the things I learned, it has also surpassed my expectations, after one day I came home with at least 4 pages of notes, all of them incredibly interesting.
Absolutely. When you study in school, all you really cover is theoretical, but no one really shows you what work would actually be in a future in the field you are interested. This experience has helped to clear that image of what biomedicine and biochemistry is in practice and not only in paper.
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