My Working DayLisa Burke, clinical embryologist at Human Assisted Reproduction Ireland (HARI), loves patient contact and helping couples achieve their dreams
The HARI unit opened in 1986. We do approximately 1,000 treatment cycles per year of IVF and ICSI and frozen cycles.
My title is clinical embryologist, and my work in the clinical IVF unit involves the day-to-day running of the laboratory. I'm also currently studying for a certificate in embryology with the Association of Clinical Embryologists in the UK, which involves quite a bit of coursework. Research is also a small part of our work.
We start at 7.45 each morning, when the whole unit has a meeting to discuss current patients and other business. We are currently implementing the EU Tissue Directive, which means that labs have to meet certain standards. We are working towards that and hope to be one of the first clinics to achieve it.
Initially, when a patient comes through for treatment, she undergoes a controlled drug-stimulated cycle. When her ovaries are ready and have many follicles she undergoes an egg collection.
It is then my job to assist in theatre and search all the fluid from these follicles and find the eggs. Next I prepare her partner's sperm sample. Then depending on how much sperm there is, we add some sperm to the egg in a tube and the eggs fertilise naturally by themselves. This is called standard IVF.
If there is very little sperm in the sample then I can take a single sperm and inject it directly into the egg. This is called intracytoplasmic injection (ICSI). The following day we check the eggs to see how many are fertilised. The embryos should then start to divide by the end of this day. The day after that we transfer the embryos, which should be two to six cells, back into the patient, but sometimes we wait another day to carry out this transfer. We also carry out frozen cycles, which means that the embryos are frozen, thawed and put back.
If the patient has any surplus eggs we freeze these for use at a later date. We also run a service for cancer patients where we can freeze their eggs or sperm before they undergo radiation treatment or chemotherapy.
I am also in charge of the external quality assessment control for the lab. This is where our analysis of samples is compared to that of other units in the UK.
I love the patient contact in my job and being able to change someone's life for the better by helping them achieve their dream.