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I am a mum of three kids. I live in Dublin. I am kept very busy taking my kids to gaelic football, hockey, swimming, music and drama. I enjoy running and I am going to run in the Dublin marathon next week.

I work in the microbiology laboratory in a large Dublin teaching hospital.

My work is very varied. We receive lots of different samples into the laboratory which we culture and look for bacteria that are causing the infection in the patient. We determine which bacteria are significant as not all bacteria cause infection. We also determine which antibiotics can be used to treat the infection-this is called susceptibility testing. We also look for the bacterial DNA in samples-this is what we call molecular testing.

There is different areas in the laboratory and I can be rostered in any area. If I am on the wound swab/fluids/sputum/genital specimen bench, I would start reading all the culture plates which would have been set up the day before and incubated overnight. Depending on the specimen site I would decide which bacteria are significant and need to be identified. There are many tests that can be used to identify bacteria but mainly we use a Maldi-tof which uses mass spectrometry to identify the bacteria. Following identification I then perform susceptibilty testing whereby I determine which antibiotics can be used to treat the infection. I then report out all results to the doctors so that they can trat the patient.