Transfusion Clinical Stream Lead Assoc Prof Mark Dean will walk out the doors of the Gosford Hospital Laboratory for the last time this month after a career that started in 1986 as an intern at Westmead Hospital.

Com­ing up as a young doc­tor, a career in pathol­o­gy was nev­er at the front of Mark’s mind.

“As a junior doc­tor, I kept on being rotat­ed through haema­tol­ogy terms. I had nev­er real­ly thought of doing this as a spe­cial­ty but fell in love with car­ing for the patients,” he said.

“It is also a spe­cial­ty where you can then diag­nose the prob­lem. I was lucky to have a rota­tion as a reg­is­trar through the Red Cross, and that start­ed my pas­sion for blood transfusion.”

After work­ing at Con­cord Hos­pi­tal for a few years, Mark decid­ed to pur­sue the pas­sion he devel­oped as an intern and joined the NSW Red Cross Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice as the Assis­tant Direc­tor – a posi­tion he held for the next 8 years.

In 2001, Mark made a move to the pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry at Gos­ford Hos­pi­tal where he would spend the rest of his career. He embraced numer­ous lead­er­ship posi­tions dur­ing this time from Lab­o­ra­to­ry Direc­tor for Cen­tral Coast to chair­ing the local Blood Trans­fu­sion Com­mit­tee, as well as chair­ing the Pathol­o­gy North Trans­fu­sion and Haema­tol­ogy Dis­ci­pline Advi­so­ry Committee.

For the past 10 years, Mark has been the Trans­fu­sion Clin­i­cal Stream lead play­ing a vital role in devel­op­ing stan­dard­ised trans­fu­sion labs through­out the ear­ly years of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy and beyond.

“I am very proud that we now have agreed NSW Health Pathol­o­gy pro­ce­dures and poli­cies in place that cov­er the vast major­i­ty of our work,” he said.

Look­ing back on his career, Mark’s most ful­fill­ing expe­ri­ences were work­ing with staff at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy who were ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing a high-qual­i­ty ser­vice for patients through­out NSW.

“I think some of the most reward­ing high­lights recent­ly have been see­ing the com­mit­ment of our trans­fu­sion staff in com­ing togeth­er so we can pro­vide the best pos­si­ble trans­fu­sion ser­vice for our patients.

“It is so good to see this involve­ment, espe­cial­ly as we move to the imple­men­ta­tion of our statewide lab­o­ra­to­ry infor­ma­tion system.”

As for retire­ment plans, Mark is most excit­ed at the prospect of get­ting to spend more time with his fam­i­ly and grand­chil­dren, as well as pur­su­ing his oth­er pas­sion of land­scape and drone pho­tog­ra­phy and is hop­ing to start delv­ing into the fas­ci­nat­ing world of astrophotography.

Con­grat­u­la­tions Mark on an incred­i­ble career, you will be missed!

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