Vale Professor Creswell John Eastman AO

Take a look behind the scenes at our pathology laboratory at Lithgow Hospital and meet some of the team caring for the local community.

Matthew O’Neal has been NSW Health Pathology’s lab­o­ra­to­ry man­ag­er at Lith­gow since 2007.

Dur­ing his 39-year career in pathol­o­gy Matthew has worked in both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor, start­ing in Syd­ney and mov­ing to Bathurst in the NSW Cen­tral West, before set­tling in Lithgow.

He says the small team is like a fam­i­ly and proud to be pro­vid­ing pathol­o­gy ser­vices sev­en days a week to the Lith­gow and sur­round­ing community.

“Lith­gow is a real­ly great place to work and as lab man­ag­er I try to ensure the work­place is reward­ing for our team,” he said.

“We’ve got a heavy focus on out­pa­tients here, eas­i­ly a third of our work is relat­ed to outpatients.

The Lith­gow lab­o­ra­to­ry boasts the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy, with a new chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy analyser installed in July 2023 as part of NSW Health Pathology’s $29 mil­lion invest­ment to upgrade analy­sers across Syd­ney and region­al NSW, bring­ing in new lev­els of automa­tion and standardisation.

The lab per­forms approx­i­mate­ly 96,000 tests each year on around 20,000 sam­ples with turn-around for most tests less than one hour.

The Lith­gow lab­o­ra­to­ry per­forms all rou­tine test­ing for Lith­gow Hos­pi­tal and local Jus­tice Health; we recent­ly added to our test­ing menu for the hospital’s Ambu­la­to­ry Care Clin­ic to improve the ser­vice. Our twice-dai­ly links with Nepean and West­mead Hos­pi­tals as well as the entire state-wide net­work sup­ple­ment our test menu.

Matthew says he’s espe­cial­ly proud that the Lith­gow lab and col­lec­tion ser­vice is open sev­en days a week.

“I know the impor­tance of hav­ing pathol­o­gy ser­vices in the local com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

“My sis­ter was diag­nosed with a brain tumour in 2014. It made me realise how dif­fi­cult it can be for peo­ple to get to a col­lec­tion ser­vice when it’s only open in busi­ness hours.

“Our col­lec­tion ser­vice is open at Lith­gow Hos­pi­tal sev­en days a week, 7½ hours a day on week­days from 8:30am to 4pm, and on week­ends 10.30am to 1pm.

“We also have a col­lec­tion ser­vice at Port­land MPS, with more lim­it­ed open­ing hours of 8.30am to 11.30am week­days, so we are serv­ing our com­mu­ni­ty as much as possible.

“The lab­o­ra­to­ry is acces­si­ble to the hos­pi­tal every day of the year – even Christ­mas Day – to pro­vide fast and accu­rate results for patients and clin­i­cians across the region,” Matthew said.

“We are on-call for the hos­pi­tal Emer­gency Depart­ment and sur­gi­cal the­atres for any cas­es deemed clin­i­cal­ly urgent 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week.”

Meet Cassandra Quinn – Technical Assistant (pathology collector)

Cas­san­dra Quinn began work at the Lith­gow lab­o­ra­to­ry in 2024 and says she enjoys the prac­ti­cal nature of being a collector.

She says col­lec­tions allows her to engage direct­ly with patients as well as per­form tech­ni­cal tasks in the lab.

“I enjoy help­ing oth­ers and through pathol­o­gy col­lec­tion I can con­tribute to patient care, sup­port­ing patients through their health­care jour­ney,” she said.

“But what I enjoy the most is per­form­ing tech­ni­cal tasks such as draw­ing blood sam­ples and processing.”

Cas­san­dra Quinn in the col­lec­tions room at Lithgow.

Cas­san­dra says the team at Lith­gow is incred­i­bly sup­port­ive and work­ing with a small­er team gives her the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from her more expe­ri­enced colleagues.

“I’ve also recent­ly been giv­en an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand my knowl­edge and fur­ther my career by com­menc­ing my Cer­tifi­cate 4 in Lab­o­ra­to­ry Tech­niques through NSW Health Pathology.”

When it comes to liv­ing in Lith­gow, Cas­san­dra says she loves the stun­ning land­scape and the sense of com­mu­ni­ty in the town.

“I am a body­builder, cross-fit­ter and aer­i­al ath­lete. I do all of these things local­ly which has allowed me to make an amaz­ing social net­work here in Lithgow.

“With my new­found fit friends I go on some of the amaz­ing trail runs in my sur­round­ing area and join in a local bush walk every first Sun­day of the month.”

Meet Hospital Scientist, Ryan Benton

Ryan is a Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist at Lith­gow lab­o­ra­to­ry and his work involves analysing sam­ples, mon­i­tor­ing qual­i­ty con­trol and trans­fu­sion medicine.

His career with NSW Health Pathol­o­gy began in 2018 when he start­ed as a Tech­ni­cal Assis­tant at the Orange Laboratory.

“I’ve always had a broad inter­est in sci­ence and the human body, and pathol­o­gy allowed me to be able to apply that in a field that is direct­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the care of peo­ple in my com­mu­ni­ty,” Ryan explains.

“What I love about my work, espe­cial­ly in a small lab such as Lith­gow, is that it con­tains such variety.

“You fre­quent­ly switch between chem­istry, haema­tol­ogy and trans­fu­sion in a way that keeps the job engaging.

“The role also allows you to be much more patient fac­ing, as we fre­quent­ly col­lect blood from patients in both inpa­tient and out­pa­tient set­tings. I believe this helps to put a face to the work we are doing and acts a pos­i­tive reminder that our patients are more than just tubes and numbers.”

Ryan grew up in a rur­al area of the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry and says he feels at home liv­ing and work­ing in region­al NSW.

He says he enjoys work­ing with­in a small team envi­ron­ment and col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er staff and depart­ments through­out Lith­gow hospital.

“Out­side of work, my spare time is spent with my fam­i­ly and with my church. My wife and I are cur­rent­ly rais­ing our 11-month-old son, who is a lot of work but also a lot of fun and a con­stant source of joy,” Ryan said. “My faith is very impor­tant to me.”