From collecting samples at Wagga to studying at Oxford

Cathie Atkins is calling time on a science career spanning five decades, leading pathology operations in Northern Sydney, including designing the current Royal North Shore Laboratory, one of the busiest labs in the state.

As Pink Floyd were releas­ing their 1973 block buster album “The Dark Side of the Moon”, Cathie Atkins was about to start her first year work­ing in healthcare.

“I start­ed as a cadet, which is like a traineeship/apprenticeship with the Health Com­mis­sion in 1973. It’s hard to believe it was 52 years ago, but who’s count­ing?” Cathie said.

The Rive­ri­na girl from Wag­ga Wag­ga made the move to ‘the big smoke’ after com­plet­ing a Bio­med­ical Sci­ence degree and has just retired as Senior Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er of NSW Health’s Pathology’s North­ern Syd­ney Operations.

“I didn’t know any­thing about pathol­o­gy at the end of Year 12. My father was a chem­istry and biol­o­gy lec­tur­er when I was very young. After vis­it­ing him at work, I devel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion with laboratories.

“I went to a coun­try high school in Wag­ga Wag­ga, got a rea­son­able sci­ence mark in my HSC and had applied for a cou­ple of med­ical-relat­ed uni­ver­si­ty cours­es. I was some­how head-hunt­ed to join the first intake of a brand-new Med­ical Tech­nol­o­gy Course at Rive­ri­na Col­lege (now Charles Sturt University).”

One of the goals of the course was to try and attract kids from the coun­try to be the future pathol­o­gy work­force in region­al towns.

“I was sent to the Wag­ga Wag­ga Lab­o­ra­to­ry to see what pathol­o­gy was about and then enrolled with 11 oth­er stu­dents. And the rest, as they say, is history!

“I’ve been an Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er in North­ern Syd­ney since 1997 and have had the plea­sure of being part of a fan­tas­tic team of pathol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als pro­vid­ing a high-qual­i­ty ser­vice to our hos­pi­tals and many GPs in North­ern Syd­ney and far beyond.

“My role and respon­si­bil­i­ties grew from look­ing after four branch labs, to all 24/7 labs and pre-and-post-ana­lyt­i­cal ser­vices, to all the labs in North­ern Syd­ney includ­ing the drug test­ing lab at Mac­quar­ie Hos­pi­tal and, briefly, the Qual­i­ty Team, to my cur­rent role as Senior Oper­a­tions Manager.

“Some think stay­ing in effec­tive­ly the one job, in the one loca­tion may mean you don’t grow or get oppor­tu­ni­ties, but there was not one day in the past 29 years where I didn’t have oppor­tu­ni­ties for both per­son­al devel­op­ment and process improvement.”

Proud­est achievements 

Cathie said there have been many proud achieve­ments over the years.

“I was the first grad­u­ate, and the only one that year with what is now a Bio­med­ical Sci­ence Degree from Rive­ri­na Col­lege (now Charles Sturt Uni). The degree course was intro­duced just as I was fin­ish­ing my diplo­ma, so I only had to com­plete one more year to get the degree, two years ahead of all the oth­ers enrolling.

“In 1990 I took a lab through its very first NATA accred­i­ta­tion as act­ing Lab Man­ag­er. There was a lot that need­ed to be set up from absolute scratch in a very short time – the lab received com­men­da­tions and no neg­a­tive find­ings – it was a very steep learn­ing curve.

“In 1997 I was one of four senior scientists/managers mak­ing up the project team who worked ini­tial­ly with Dr Eva Raik and then Prof Leslie Bur­nett to form PaLMS – which was the pathol­o­gy ser­vice for what was then known as North­ern Syd­ney Area Health Ser­vice,” she said.

“I moved into my first role as Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er around this time. It was a thor­ough­ly reward­ing time and involved bring­ing 22 labs togeth­er into one ser­vice, devel­op­ing ser­vice mod­els, cen­tral­is­ing Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy and Micro­bi­ol­o­gy, estab­lish­ing from scratch a cen­tralised spec­i­men recep­tion, a core lab, a ser­vice cen­tre, a couri­er ser­vice, iden­ti­fy­ing loca­tions to open col­lec­tion rooms, replac­ing sev­en dif­fer­ent IT sys­tems with a sin­gle lab­o­ra­to­ry infor­ma­tion sys­tem and tak­ing over the con­tract to ser­vice North Shore Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal at the time,” Cathie said.

As Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er, Cathie played a key role in the team that designed the cur­rent Roy­al North Shore Hos­pi­tal (RNSH) lab­o­ra­to­ry, mov­ing the entire lab ser­vice across the RNSH cam­pus. They also designed a new lab at Horns­by and decom­mis­sioned the Mona Vale and Man­ly labs to make way for the new North­ern Beach­es Hospital.

Adapt­ing and respond­ing to changes

Cathie has seen many changes over her career.

“My first time work­ing in a lab was in 1974, and there were no com­put­ers. We did our chem­istry in test tubes in water baths and used flame pho­tome­ters and chlo­ride meters. I recall the effi­cien­cies when APIs were intro­duced into our Micro Lab,” she said.

“Our haemo­glo­bins involved man­u­al dilu­tions in cuvettes, spec­tropho­tome­ters and results read off graphs. The white cells and platelets were count­ed in Neubauer cham­bers. Blood for trans­fu­sion was in bot­tles not plas­tic packs.

A strong leader through times of change

Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Oper­a­tions – Met­ro­pol­i­tan Louise Wien­holt paid trib­ute to Cathie’s can-do atti­tude and strong lead­er­ship through times of change.

“For those of us who have had the priv­i­lege of work­ing along­side Cathie, her retire­ment is bit­ter­sweet! While we wish her all the best for the next chap­ter of her life – she will be sore­ly missed across the organ­i­sa­tion,” Louise said.

“Over the years, Cathie has guid­ed the team through an extra­or­di­nary era of change, always with a steady hand, clear vision, and unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the peo­ple she works with,” she said.

“When reflect­ing on Cathie’s impact, it is impos­si­ble not to men­tion the sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion involved in the North­ern Beach­es devel­op­ment and the realign­ment of ser­vices pro­vid­ed to North­ern Syd­ney Local Health Dis­trict dur­ing this change.”

Cathie always approached oper­a­tional chal­lenges with a solu­tions-focused mind­set, empow­er­ing the team to embrace new mod­els of ser­vice pro­vi­sion while main­tain­ing a focus on pro­vid­ing an excel­lent service.

“Thank you, Cathie, for your lead­er­ship, men­tor­ship, and unwa­ver­ing sup­port. Wish­ing you all the best in this excit­ing new chapter—you leave behind a team and a ser­vice that are stronger because of you. I am grate­ful to have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with you,” Louise said.

As for Cathie’s plans for retire­ment, it doesn’t sound like she’ll be slow­ing down any­time soon – a new home, plans to trav­el and purs­ing new pas­sions are on her buck­et list!

“I’ll be mov­ing and set­tling into my new home and new com­mu­ni­ty (which is very dif­fer­ent to where I live now), trav­el­ling as much as pos­si­ble and spend­ing more time with fam­i­ly and friends. I look for­ward to tak­ing up many new activ­i­ties, now that I’ll have more time on my hands,” she said.

Wish­ing you all the best, Cathie!