When Chirine walked into the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in 1998, she had just completed a weekend course and immediately found herself “in the deep end”. What worried her most wasn’t the clinical work – it was asking patients to roll up their sleeves.

“I didn’t want peo­ple to crum­ple their nice­ly ironed clothes,” she recalls. But she quick­ly learned to swim and dis­cov­ered a career that per­fect­ly matched her love of people.

Today, Chirine works across mul­ti­ple NSW Health Pathol­o­gy sites in west­ern Syd­ney, bring­ing warmth, empa­thy and a deep sense of care to every inter­ac­tion. She loves being part of people’s health care and the relief that comes with good results. Her calm, reas­sur­ing man­ner has become her trademark.

What do you enjoy most about being a pathol­o­gy collector?
I love feel­ing like I’m help­ing peo­ple. Some­times you’re the first friend­ly face they’ve seen that day and it makes peo­ple light up – it’s nice to wit­ness that.

How do you help patients who are nervous?
Talk­ing works won­ders. With adults I ask about week­end plans or din­ner. Kids count back­wards from 100 – and many stop at 99 and look to Mum for help, which always makes them smile, and then the col­lec­tion is over, quick as that.

What guides your approach?
We all have busy lives and we don’t know what some­one is going through – they might be unwell, sad or over­whelmed. I try to treat every­one with patience and kindness.

What lan­guages do you speak and how does that help?
I speak French, Ara­bic and Eng­lish. Being able to greet some­one or explain some­thing in their lan­guage real­ly puts them at ease and helps patients feel seen and understood.

What do you enjoy out­side work?
My daugh­ter, who’s 12, keeps me busy. I paint and draw por­traits, and I like help­ing neigh­bours, run­ning errands or check­ing in on peo­ple in my community.”

What patients say about Chirine

Her patients con­sis­tent­ly describe her as gen­tle, thought­ful and excep­tion­al­ly skilled:

• “Quick, no pain — a true professional”.
• “Thought­ful and com­fort­ing, even with dif­fi­cult veins”.
• “She spoke to me every step of the way and made me feel safe”.
• “Went out of her way to help my hus­band dur­ing a very try­ing situation”.

Pathol­o­gy wasn’t Chirine’s orig­i­nal plan. Her mum dreamed of her open­ing a phar­ma­cy, and med­i­cine required long study and demand­ing hours. Pathol­o­gy struck the per­fect bal­ance: mean­ing­ful patient care, steady hours and a team that feels like fam­i­ly. She cred­its her man­agers’ kind­ness and pro­fes­sion­al­ism for cre­at­ing a sup­port­ive, hap­py workplace.

Chirine embod­ies the best of pathol­o­gy care: skill, com­pas­sion, and a gen­uine love of people.

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