HSMT student volunteers

Dan McAteer, one of the students on the Master’s in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology was interviewed by the Guardian about his motivations for and experience of volunteering to take part in the University of Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine trial. 

‘“For an ancient university, they’ve really kicked into gear at speed. You can tell that things have been put together with urgency, but also that they know what they’re doing. There’s a particular kind of doctor who exudes a gentle, studious authority as they work. There seem to be a fair few of them around. For a small group of medics and scientists, this is like an engineer corps throwing a bridge together in a warzone: fast and methodical.”

McAteer also spoke of medical students who had been enlisted to help across the NHS, encountering one who helped him with some paperwork: “I was struck by how his university life had been turned upside down even more than mine. He should have been on a rotation or cramming for exams, but had instead been deployed to Covid work for the foreseeable future.”’

Read the full article here