• Question: How creative do you have to be in your job?

    Asked by frances to Dominic, Maedeh, Matthew, Matt, Monica on 8 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Matthew Oldfield

      Matthew Oldfield answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      Often at the beginning of the task I have to be creative to try and find a good solution to a problem. Seeing whether that solution works then requires different skills. Those skills are (among others) patience, precision and method. Sometimes the creative part happens in a minute and the rest takes several months. On other occasions the creative part happens each time a problem is found when trying to achieve a goal. There are sometimes times when I will have to sit and think for an hour to try an understand how to make a simulation work or how to change an experiment so that we don’t have to spend thousands of pounds for each test!

    • Photo: Monica Rozeik

      Monica Rozeik answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Hi Frances, you need to have some creativity. Often we’re being asked to solve a problem. We need to think of something new or use old items together in a new way.

      This can be done on our own or as part of a team. Meetings are a good way of being creative together.

    • Photo: Dominic Eggbeer

      Dominic Eggbeer answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Some of the time I have to be very creative indeed. My job requires me to work with surgeons who have a lot of medical knowledge, but do not really fully understand the engineering knowledge I have. I need to interpret what they want to do in surgery, come up with a device design (sometimes with them on the other end of an on-line chat) and present it to them so they can understand it. I also need to think about how the device will be made.

      Each case I work on is for a single person with a unique medical condition. A unique solution is required each time.

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