• Healthcare scientist at Royal Bolton Hospital recognised for improving patient care
• Carolyn Williams received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the North West Healthcare Science Awards
• Carolyn shares advice on starting careers on Healthcare Science Week (10 – 16 March 2025)

A healthcare scientist at Royal Bolton Hospital has been recognised for dedicating more than twenty years of their career to improving patient care and healthcare standards.

Carolyn Williams received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the North West Healthcare Science Awards 2025, which aim to spotlight individuals and teams who have made a profound impact in their field.

Carolyn’s journey in Clinical Biochemistry began in 1999 as a trainee scientist at Wythenshawe Hospital.

I feel very honoured and humbled to have been nominated for this award by my colleagues and although I have worked in the NHS for over 25 years, it doesn’t seem like a ‘lifetime’!”

“My main motivation is ensuring patients receive high quality diagnostic testing and helping my clinical colleagues get the most out of laboratory testing for their patients. I love the subject and interpreting blood results in the clinical context. Being able to act as an interface between the labs and clinical teams and develop new services with the team is something I really enjoy.

Since then, Carolyn has worked as a Higher Specialist Trainee Biochemist, lead Bolton NHS Foundation Trust’s Point of Care team, before helping to expand and enhance the Trust’s Foetal Anomaly Screening service to become the third largest screening laboratory in the country and set new records for quality.

The foetal anomaly screening service is very close to my heart and an area of particular interest because of the impact of the results on thousands of women and families. It is an honour to be trusted with such an important test and to continue to expand this service to be one of the major centres in the UK is a testament to the dedication of the whole team.

“To become an advisor to the national programme and develop further expertise in the area is an honour and I am able to feedback the national viewpoint into my own department thereby improving our service.

Carolyn is currently the Head of Department for Biochemistry and Clinical Lead for Laboratory Medicine at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, safely leading the department through the COVID pandemic and major projects.

COVID seems a surreal time now, I recall a time where people pulled together to achieve great things in a short space of time, such as the setting up of COVID testing, COVID antibody testing and vaccinations, so in that sense it was a time of great creativity and innovation. However of course this accompanied a tragic, sombre time with lots of isolation and loneliness for many and the  Bolton team did an excellent job for their community.

Monday 10 – Sunday 16 March 2025 marks Healthcare Science Week, which celebrates and raises awareness of healthcare science and its vital contribution to the NHS and patient care.

The theme this year is ‘Change and Adapt’ to showcase how healthcare science is an exciting and fast-moving career – working at the cutting edge of innovation, changing and adapting to support patient care and treatment, and developing new scientific evidence and technology.

Healthcare science is a career Carolyn champions and has advice for future generations who are looking to kick-start their own journey:

For anyone looking to get into healthcare science, find out all you can about the opportunities and roles and explore what would suit you and then reach out, most of us are happy to give advice to aspiring scientists or signpost them to the best resources to help them achieve their goals.