Physiology: Your skills

Physiology is the science of normal functions and phenomena of living organisms. During your course, you study the biochemistry of individual cells, integrating this into an understanding of organ function and how living things work. Physiology often looks at the bigger biological picture, creating a broad base of knowledge. The ability to look at science from different angles (individual pieces as well as the big picture) is considered a skill in itself.

Studying physiology enables you to develop skills in planning, conducting/evaluating experiments, and researching and interpreting scientific literature. You also develop the ability to communicate science to both peers and non-scientists and to present work in a variety of ways, including giving talks, writing fluently and presenting results in graphs, tables and diagrams.

In addition, you gain a wide range of transferable skills highly sought after by employers. These skills include:

• analytical and problem-solving skills - thinking your way around problems, developing hypotheses and designing experiments to address questions being asked;
• using judgement, decision-making and questioning skills;
• the ability to identify, select, organise and communicate information and data;
• computing and statistics - using spreadsheets, databases and presentation packages;
• numeracy skills;
• attention to detail;
• process operation and professional expertise;
• planning, organisation and time management - acquired through balancing lectures, practicals, study, part-time work and social activities;
• teamworking and collaborating between groups - developed through laboratory and project work;
• persistence and resilience - from those experiments that didn't go right the first or even second time around.