After a 43-year career in pathology, Director of Operations – NSW Health Pathology North’s Scott Jansson is retiring. He’s worked all over NSW in various lab-based roles – working his way up from Trainee Technical Officer to Scientific Officer, manager and administrator.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy (NSWHP) is cel­e­brat­ing the career of Scott Jans­son, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions, North and med­ical sci­en­tist, as he retires after 43 years work­ing in pathology.

Scott has been part of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy since 2016 when he joined as the Clin­i­cal Streams Co-ordi­na­tor, but his days in pathol­o­gy start­ed back in 1980 where he first donned the white lab coat as a Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer at the Roy­al New­cas­tle Hospital.

Scott admits he didn’t intend to end up work­ing in pathology.

“I was plan­ning on being a teacher, but I was accept­ed into the Lab­o­ra­to­ry Sci­ence course in Wag­ga Wag­ga, so I decid­ed to give it a try. At first I thought it was a mis­take, but in hind­sight, it was bless­ing for me (and in some way, for the stu­dents I might have taught!),” Scott said.

“We rely on pathol­o­gy for med­ical diag­noses, treat­ment devel­op­ment, and a host of oth­er med­ical break­throughs. I’ve enjoyed help­ing peo­ple find answers that mat­ter and that have made a dif­fer­ence to their treatment.”

Ear­ly in his career, Scott moved from the Roy­al New­cas­tle Hos­pi­tal and spent three years work­ing in micro­bi­ol­o­gy at the Dub­bo Hos­pi­tal lab, before spend­ing five years at Roy­al North Shore Hos­pi­tal lab in Haematology.

Scott moved on to var­i­ous roles at labs in Can­ber­ra, Bal­larat, Ade­laide and Mel­bourne – work­ing his way up from Trainee Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer to Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer and Manager.

“I sound a bit like Aus­tralian coun­try singer Geoff Mack’s song, ‘I’ve been every­where, man’.”

Most recent­ly Scott has been the Act­ing Direc­tor of NSWHP’s South and Direc­tor of NSWHP’s North, over­see­ing 20 lab­o­ra­to­ries cov­er­ing North Syd­ney, Cen­tral Coast, Hunter New Eng­land, Mid North Coast and North­ern NSW LHDs.

“It’s been a career high­light to work along­side so many great and ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple,” Scott said.

“I’m espe­cial­ly proud of the ded­i­ca­tion of staff dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and see­ing the val­ue that pub­lic pathol­o­gy ser­vices can bring to the com­mu­ni­ty and the health­care system.

“I’m also proud to have worked as part of the team that estab­lished pub­lic pathol­o­gy ser­vices back at Port Mac­quar­ie Base Hos­pi­tal last year, as well as many new labs across the NSWHP statewide network.”

In retire­ment, Scott plans to take the same approach he took with his work.

“I’ll just keep mak­ing it up as I go along. I hope to do plen­ty of trav­el and take up a new hob­by – some­thing that keeps me curious.”

All the best for your retire­ment Scott, we’ll miss you!

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