Emma Crookes is the Respiratory and Sleep Physiological Science Service Manager at Sherwood Forest Hospitals. In this episode, she opens the door on healthcare science, one of the NHS's least understood professions.

Emma explains how her team diagnoses and treats sleep apnoea, a condition affecting around 5% of the population that often goes unnoticed until a partner points out the snoring and breathlessness in the night. She talks through lung function tests, the psychology of getting nervous patients to blow into intimidating machines, and the 8,000 patients on CPAP treatment across the trust.

She reflects on a career that started in equine sports science, a chance conversation with her auntie about a job advert, and twenty years building a service that sits under the healthcare science umbrella that most people have never heard of. Along the way she shares why she still does a little jig when she sees healthcare science listed as a career option for schoolchildren and why getting people moving despite breathlessness matters as much as any medication.

A conversation about diagnosis, motivation and a profession working quietly behind the scenes to keep patients breathing easier.

Lauren Ward plans for the moments nobody wants to imagine. As Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Officer, she helps ensure the NHS is ready for everything from major incidents to power failures and extreme weather. But behind her role lies an extraordinary personal story of RAF service, two cancer diagnoses in a single year, losing the career she loved and finding a new purpose helping others. A moving conversation about resilience, leadership, family and staying calm when life takes an unexpected turn.

Cherry Lee has a shaved head, tattoos and piercings. She drives a lorry. She's the lead singer of an 80s/90s rock band called Thick Skinned. And she's one of the most thoughtful, strategic leaders you'll ever meet.

Deputy General Manager for Surgery. Former jockey, former rugby player, former nurse, former ODP, former Surgical Care Practitioner. Someone who's learned that assumptions are usually wrong.

Her journey includes a cardiac arrest at 19 that ended her sport career. Her parents consented to amputation. Surgeons in Scarborough saved her leg. A consultant told her: "Your sport career is over. But you've still got a life. So think about what you want to do."

So she became a patient. Then institutionalized to hospital life. Then a nurse who saw ODPs doing the exciting bits in resus and thought "that's for me." Then operations. Then leadership.

Six careers. Never settling for the status quo. Never letting anyone else define who she should be.

Her advice to her younger self? "All the mistakes I've made have made me who I am. Just do what you want to in the moment and it'll take you where it needs to go."

Don't judge the book by its cover. You'll miss the whole story.