NSW Health Pathology has launched its own podcast – Pathologically Speaking. It’s where you’ll meet some of the best and brightest people working behind the scenes to protect and enhance the health, safety and wellbeing of our communities at all stages of life.

We are releas­ing new episodes each week and we take some deep dives into some fas­ci­nat­ing topics.

We talk foren­sics, genet­ics, pan­demics, and delve into some of our organisation’s most inter­est­ing backstories.

Your host, Liz Far­quhar, chats to a fan­tas­tic line up of guests about their roles at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, their back­ground, inter­est­ing sto­ries of their job, dis­cov­er­ies, break­throughs, career tips, per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al tri­umphs and hur­dles, and the pow­er of curios­i­ty when find­ing the answers that mat­ter to people.

Liz worked as a jour­nal­ist with the ABC for more than 27 years before join­ing NSW Health Pathol­o­gy in 2022 as the media rela­tions manager.

“I knew soon after arriv­ing here that this was the per­fect place to launch a pod­cast,” Liz said.

“There is so much incred­i­ble work going on through­out the organ­i­sa­tion, sto­ries that very rarely get told and this was a chance to bring some of that work and the amaz­ing peo­ple behind it into the spot­light,” she said.

“A lot of peo­ple in pathol­o­gy are used to work­ing behind the scenes, but the work they do plays such a vital role in keep­ing us all safe and healthy as a com­mu­ni­ty, I’m so grate­ful they’ve tak­en the time to step out of the lab and the office to share their stories.

“The pod­cast is about let­ting peo­ple know how vital pathol­o­gy ser­vices are, things you may not even realise are being done in the lab­o­ra­to­ry of your local hospital.”

In the first episode Liz talks to Pro­fes­sor Dominic Dwyer, a world-renowned med­ical virol­o­gist and pub­lic health physi­cian about his extra­or­di­nary career span­ning more than four decades and ded­i­cat­ed to research­ing, diag­nos­ing and treat­ing infec­tious diseases.

He became the pub­lic face of pathol­o­gy ser­vices dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and was the only Aus­tralian select­ed by the WHO to trav­el to Chi­na to inves­ti­gate the ori­gins of the virus.

Prof Dwyer reveals what he con­sid­ers his most reward­ing work and how work­ing in west­ern Syd­ney changed his per­spec­tive on pub­lic health.

Next, Liz inter­views Senior Foren­sic Pathol­o­gist Dr Sairi­ta Maistry about what drew her to foren­sic pathol­o­gy as a young woman grow­ing up in South Africa, and why she rec­om­mends med­ical stu­dents take time to con­sid­er foren­sic pathol­o­gy as a career pathway.

Dr Maistry describes how NSW Health Pathology’s Foren­sic Med­i­cine Ser­vice oper­ates with­in the Coro­nial sys­tem, pro­vid­ing answers when there is an unex­pect­ed or unex­plained death referred to the Coroner.

Then we take you into the blood trans­fu­sion lab at Newcastle’s John Hunter Hos­pi­tal. Liz sits down with Kami­laroi woman and Senior Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry Sci­en­tist in charge of Blood Trans­fu­sion, Sarah Dimmock.

Sarah explains what hap­pens to the pre­cious blood dona­tions that arrive dai­ly in our major hos­pi­tals, how we deter­mine whether the blood will match each patient, and the extra­or­di­nary work that goes into ensur­ing that it’s ready when it’s need­ed most – and we don’t waste a drop.

And that’s just the start.

We also speak to renowned melanoma expert and joint Aus­tralian of the Year, pathol­o­gist Richard Scoly­er about his ground­break­ing work in the treat­ment of the dead­liest form of skin can­cer and his own bat­tle to beat brain cancer.

Med­ical ento­mol­o­gist and mozzie expert Cameron Webb explains how the Syd­ney Olympics played a cru­cial role in deter­min­ing his career path and reveals a secret tal­ent for cre­at­ing music.

We find out what being an authen­tic leader means to our Chief Exec­u­tive Vanes­sa Janissen.

We’ll also bring you the incred­i­ble sto­ries of what went on at Australia’s largest pub­lic pathol­o­gy ser­vice dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic and the lat­est on genomics and pre­ci­sion, per­son­alised can­cer treatment.

Patho­log­i­cal­ly Speak­ing is avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, YouTube, Apple Pod­casts, and iHeartRa­dio and you can find the lat­est episodes here.

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