Following a distinguished career at NSW Health and NSW Health Pathology spanning 20 years, Michael Clough is moving on to pursue new challenges and spend time with this family.

Michael is the Lead Dis­ci­pline Sci­en­tist (Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy, West, Rur­al and Region­al) based at NSWHP’s ICPMR West­mead. He’s well known to many in the city and region­al labs, and has always cham­pi­oned the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of up-and-com­ing sci­en­tists across the organisation.

In 2001, Michael was the first Net­work Sci­en­tist to be employed at West­mead ICPMR. He brought a wealth of sci­en­tif­ic and man­age­ment expe­ri­ence gained at our labs at Roy­al North Shore and Prince of Wales Hos­pi­tals as well as the pri­vate sector.

Over the course of his career at NSW Health Pathology’s ICPMR West­mead, Michael has had many high­lights including:

• The stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy instru­men­ta­tion across what was then six dif­fer­ent pathol­o­gy ser­vices (Syd­ney South West­ern Pathol­o­gy Ser­vice, South­ern, ICPMR, Nepean, Cen­tral West Pathol­o­gy Ser­vice and Orana) and cov­ered the cur­rent 27 lab­o­ra­to­ries. Over time and thanks to the direc­tion of Michael, we were able to estab­lish com­mon train­ing, report­ing, doc­u­men­ta­tion, and qual­i­ty sys­tems. This enabled improved peer sup­port and the abil­i­ty to move trained staff to oth­er lab­o­ra­to­ries as required. One of the major ben­e­fits to come out of this, was open­ing our Bro­ken Hill lab­o­ra­to­ry with staff from across the net­work with­in a two-week peri­od in 2004.
• Being part of the team work­ing though the logis­tics of cur­rent­ly rolling out new Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy analyser equip­ment at 27 labs in West­ern Syd­ney, and rur­al and region­al NSW.
• Help­ing estab­lish POCT test­ing in our rur­al and region­al sites. The clin­i­cal units offer­ing Arte­r­i­al Blood Gas analy­sis (ABG) ser­vices were expand­ed across the met­ro­pol­i­tan cam­pus­es and all were NATA accred­it­ed for the first time. In 2010, Michael intro­duced POCT to the region­al sites with the sup­port of the South­ern and Mur­rumbidgee LHDs. This fol­lowed with ser­vices at Bro­ken Hill, Neona­tal Emer­gency Trans­port Ser­vice (NETS) and the pro­vi­sion of HbA1c test­ing for Dia­bet­ic and Pre-Admis­sion clin­ics at West­mead and Dub­bo. These ini­tial steps have evolved into NSW Health Pathology’s statewide POCT ser­vice as we know it today.
• Intro­duc­ing a third-par­ty qual­i­ty con­trol soft­ware pack­age onto a net­work serv­er for use by all lab­o­ra­to­ries. This was lat­er updat­ed to what we have now but across mul­ti­ple disciplines.
• Ratio­nal­i­sa­tion of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tem build with a cen­tral build across all Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy ser­vices. This was when the Cern­er Mil­len­ni­um was imple­ment­ed across all cur­rent West­ern Syd­ney, rur­al and region­al sites. Rather than have a sep­a­rate build for each chem­istry lab­o­ra­to­ry, we had the same build and pro­ce­dures across all sites. This enabled com­mon report for­mats and ref­er­ence inter­vals across the network.

How­ev­er, Michael’s most val­ued achieve­ment has been the sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ment and men­tor­ing of staff.

With his help, more effi­cient pro­ce­dures and improve­ments in ser­vice deliv­ery have been achieved for Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy. He’s been grate­ful for all the oppor­tu­ni­ties, sup­port and friend­ship from staff across all lev­els around NSW.

While we are very sad to see Michael leave, we wish him all the best in his new endeavours.

Thank you for your ded­i­ca­tion, inno­va­tion, friend­ship and pas­sion for help­ing devel­op the pro­fes­sion­al skills of your colleagues.

Michael’s last day at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy will be 14 July.

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