Dr Margaret Janu is calling time on a pathology career spanning more than four decades – where she’s cared for patients at Concord Hospital, led the Chemical Pathology Clinical Stream and been a Local Pathology Director. Retirement life is beckoning, and she plans to spend lots of quality time with family and grandchildren!

Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gist and Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor for Con­cord, Dr Mar­garet Janu began her work­ing life at Con­cord Hos­pi­tal as an intern in 1982 and under­took post-grad­u­ate train­ing in pathol­o­gy. She then went on to build a cel­e­brat­ed career span­ning 43 years in var­i­ous lead­er­ship roles at NSW Health Pathology.

“From very ear­ly on, I devel­oped a love of sci­ence and med­i­cine and want­i­ng to under­stand the very basis of dis­ease led me into a career in pathol­o­gy,” Mar­garet said.

“I was keen to be exposed to all the pathol­o­gy dis­ci­plines. I stud­ied Gen­er­al Pathol­o­gy and passed exam­i­na­tions in Basic Sci­ences, Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy, Haema­tol­ogy, Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy pri­or to land­ing in Chem­i­cal Pathology.

“I was award­ed the Fel­low­ship of Roy­al Aus­tralasian Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists in 1992, and com­menced at Con­cord Hos­pi­tal as a Staff Spe­cial­ist in 1995.”

This was the per­fect spring­board to her appoint­ment as Direc­tor of the Diag­nos­tic Pathol­o­gy Unit at Con­cord Hos­pi­tal, the core lab­o­ra­to­ry and the first NATA accred­it­ed mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary lab­o­ra­to­ry in a ter­tiary teach­ing hos­pi­tal in Aus­tralia in the late 1990s.

“Over the years, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ties that came my way, and held var­i­ous posi­tions as Direc­tor of Bio­chem­istry, Head of Depart­ment of the Diag­nos­tic Pathol­o­gy Unit (DPU), Clin­i­cal Stream Lead in Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy NSW Health Pathol­o­gy from 2018–2024 and have been the Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor of Con­cord Hos­pi­tal since 2019,” Mar­garet said.

“I’m extra­or­di­nar­i­ly proud of the achieve­ments in lead­ing the DPU dur­ing many years of change and advances in lab­o­ra­to­ry med­i­cine. The hard-work­ing team main­tains a ser­vice that is effi­cient, effec­tive and rel­e­vant to the needs of our patients,” she said.

“There was always a huge focus on ensur­ing the pro­file of pathol­o­gy in the hos­pi­tal com­mu­ni­ty was main­tained as a clin­i­cal spe­cial­i­ty, and ele­vat­ing the impor­tant work we do behind the scenes to enhance patient care and sup­port research, edu­ca­tion and training.

“As tech­nol­o­gy advances and new ways of work­ing emerge, I have always advo­cat­ed for the lat­est state-of-the-art equip­ment, whilst bal­anc­ing the needs and wants with finan­cial con­straints. I was so proud to over­see the recent $29 mil­lion statewide invest­ment, where NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is rolling out new chem­i­cal analy­sers to har­monise test­ing and ensure all our lab­o­ra­to­ries have access to the lat­est technology.

“This ini­tia­tive is so impor­tant, as it sup­ports con­sis­ten­cy in test­ing and enhances the qual­i­ty of diag­nos­tic ser­vices pro­vid­ed to clin­i­cians and patients across New South Wales,” she said.

Recog­ni­tion at the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Awards

The sev­en years I served as Clin­i­cal Stream Lead was anoth­er a career high­light and in par­tic­u­lar, lead­ing the team that won the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Chief Exec­u­tive’s Award for the “Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy Har­mon­i­sa­tion Project” in 2023.

“My per­son­al award as a RITES Staff Mem­ber in 2024 was the epit­o­me of recog­ni­tion from my peers and team and left me hum­bled yet very proud – it was a won­der­ful high note to fin­ish up on, and I’m so grate­ful for this recognition.”

There’s been changes and chal­lenges over four decades

Mar­garet says she’s wit­nessed so many changes over her work­ing life.

“The advances in genomics, instru­men­ta­tion, robot­ics, soft­ware advances, and machine learn­ings, just to name a few! The explo­sion in point-of-care diag­nos­tic instru­men­ta­tion is anoth­er area that’s come ahead in leaps and bounds,” she said.

“There has also been every­day changes in the way we do busi­ness – pen and paper have been rel­e­gat­ed almost to his­to­ry. From a peo­ple per­spec­tive, I think we are much more in tune with bal­anc­ing fam­i­ly and work com­mit­ments – such as job shar­ing, work­ing from home and on-line meet­ings. Then there is the con­sid­er­a­tions around per­son­al safe­ty and risk, which are very much in the fore­front of what we do, and that’s the way it should be!” she said.

Mar­garet strove to fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tive lead­er­ship amongst the med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic staff through respect, col­lec­tive prob­lem-solv­ing and embrac­ing diverse perspectives.

“When I reflect back on my work­ing life, these prin­ci­ples were always the key to suc­cess­ful­ly lead­ing my var­i­ous teams to the great out­comes we achieved.”

Trib­ute to Margaret

Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Trans­for­ma­tion, Pro­fes­sor Robert Lin­de­man paid trib­ute to Margaret’s piv­otal role in fos­ter­ing cohe­sion and coop­er­a­tion among her col­leagues, and how she always approached chal­lenges with mea­sured judge­ment to reach con­sen­sus on com­plex issues.

“Mar­garet served as the inau­gur­al Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy Clin­i­cal Stream Lead, a role she main­tained until short­ly before com­menc­ing leave pri­or to her retire­ment. The estab­lish­ment of clin­i­cal streams facil­i­tat­ed enhanced col­lab­o­ra­tion across sites, and she con­sis­tent­ly ensured that the per­spec­tives of Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gists and sci­en­tists were com­mu­ni­cat­ed effec­tive­ly to the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Exec­u­tive. Mar­garet was also a strong cham­pi­on of the organisation’s val­ues and set­ting the stan­dard for com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Clin­i­cal Stream activ­i­ties across the organ­i­sa­tion,” Rob said.

“In her capac­i­ty as spe­cial­ty lead with­in the Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gy Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice, Mar­garet guid­ed her col­leagues through the review of an enor­mous num­ber of order­ables, reporta­bles and ref­er­ence inter­vals, achiev­ing align­ment in prepa­ra­tion for the new statewide lab­o­ra­to­ry infor­ma­tion sys­tem,” he said.

“She has also pro­vid­ed key lead­er­ship in the roll­out of chem­istry analy­sers, lead­ing the progress to automa­tion and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion across sites and lay­ing the ground­work for align­ment and process improvement.”

“At the same time, Mar­garet was the Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor and acknowl­edged rep­re­sen­ta­tive of pathol­o­gy on the Con­cord cam­pus, where she was a stead­fast advo­cate for both local and statewide objec­tives,” said Rob.

Mar­garet is respect­ed not just for her spe­cial­ty exper­tise and judge­ment, but also for her deep under­stand­ing of and empa­thy for her pro­fes­sion­al col­leagues – these attrib­ut­es under­pin her suc­cess in simul­ta­ne­ous­ly man­ag­ing so many com­plex roles.

And so, with all these achieve­ments, Mar­garet embarks on a well-deserved retire­ment, which will include more Euro­pean walk­ing adven­tures, tend­ing to her large gar­den of camel­lias and aza­leas, and spend­ing pre­cious “nan­na time” with her five grandchildren.

From every­one here at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy – we wish you all the best in this next chap­ter of life Margaret.

We hope you know just how much you are appre­ci­at­ed for the many out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions you have made to the health and safe­ty of your community!

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