We took some time to talk with one of our researchers about his life-chang­ing work.

What’s your current role with NSW Health Pathology?

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Sci­en­tist, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, West­mead ICPMR.

What’s your passion?

Improv­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry-based diag­nos­tics for dis­eases that cause bleed­ing or thrombosis.

What’s your area of expertise?

Haemosta­sis (that’s a fan­cy term for blood clot­ting) diagnostics.

How has your work helped patients? 

On a per­son­al lev­el, some patients have been mis­di­ag­nosed with a dis­ease they don’t have, and using the appro­pri­ate test approach we can ‘fix’ the wrong diag­no­sis. With the wrong diag­no­sis comes the wrong treat­ment. By fix­ing the diag­no­sis, we can improve their treatment.

What advice do you have for people new to research? Where can they start? 

The most impor­tant things to get you start­ed are:

1. Find a good men­tor, prefer­ably with­in your organ­i­sa­tion. Some­one to offer guid­ance, sup­port your growth, give feed­back on your research progress, and sug­gest ways to over­come hur­dles and challenges.
2. Use resources avail­able to you. Look up pub­li­ca­tions rel­e­vant to your exper­tise or inter­ests to see what’s miss­ing or can be improved. Dis­cuss options with peo­ple in your field who are already doing research in your area.
3. Learn and con­nect. Attend rel­e­vant meet­ings, forums, and con­fer­ences, local­ly or through pro­fes­sion­al organ­i­sa­tions such as AIMS. Such events can offer great net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and expose you to the broad­er health­care and research industry.

Most impor­tant­ly – research should bring you joy and spark your curios­i­ty. Find some­thing you’re pas­sion­ate about and your out­put will reflect this.

What research tools and resources can you suggest that will help early career researchers?

As part of the NSW Gov­ern­ment pub­lic health ser­vice, our staff can access a vari­ety resources. Many jour­nals are avail­able through the Clin­i­cal Infor­ma­tion Access Por­tal (CIAP).

Check out our Research Ser­vices pages and, Local Health Dis­trict intranets, and web­sites. There are a lot of web pages ded­i­cat­ed to research. Here are a few to get you started:

• NSW Health Research Hub 
• NSW Med­ical Research 
• ECR Cen­tral 
• Science.org
• Aus­tralian Research Council

Find researchers work­ing in your area of inter­est and open some com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels with those expe­ri­enced in research in your field.

What research are you working on at the moment? 

These days, my research is essen­tial­ly look­ing at the best way to diag­nose blood clot­ting con­di­tions. In oth­er words, I analyse the work being done with­in NSW Health Pathol­o­gy and else­where around the world to deter­mine what works best.

I also work with the RCPAQAP (Roy­al Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists of Aus­trala­sia Qual­i­ty Assur­ance Pro­gram). Togeth­er, we assess what works best or does­n’t work very well.

This isn’t med­ical research in the tra­di­tion­al sense of clin­i­cal tri­als. Still, our research reflects the work we do in pathol­o­gy, mak­ing it a valu­able addi­tion to stan­dard per­for­mance of clin­i­cal diagnostics.

Are you ready to get started? 

We’re ready to help you trans­late your research project into practice.

eRe­search­With­Us is our online research access request por­tal where you can apply for any of our services.

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