Jenny Newton is a laboratory scientist with more than 35 years of experience in pathology. This year, she moved into NSW Health Pathology’s Hunter Relief position, a flexible role that supports labs wherever help is needed.

Based at our Bel­mont Hos­pi­tal lab, Jen­ny rotates between sites from Gos­ford on the Cen­tral Coast, New­cas­tle, Mait­land and as far north as Taree.

Her broad train­ing in chem­istry, haema­tol­ogy, mor­phol­o­gy and trans­fu­sion allows her to cov­er a wide range of shifts, includ­ing week­ends and after-hours.

“It gives the labs a lot more flex­i­bil­i­ty,” Jen­ny says. “I enjoy the vari­ety and the chance to move around.”

Jenny’s career began at Roy­al New­cas­tle Hos­pi­tal in 1990. She lat­er worked in Syd­ney and on the Cen­tral Coast before return­ing to Mait­land 10 years ago.

She says the pathol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty is close-knit, mak­ing it easy to walk into new labs and feel at home.

“Everyone’s always hap­py to see you in a relief role,” she says. “It’s great to know I’m help­ing to keep all these lab­o­ra­to­ries run­ning at their best and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to the care of patients.”

Jen­ny is pas­sion­ate about lab work and the con­stant learn­ing it offers.

“Even after 35 years, I’m still learn­ing new things. It nev­er gets old.”

She’s also opti­mistic about the impend­ing launch of a new Lab­o­ra­to­ry Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment sys­tem known as Beaker, with the Tranche A roll­out com­ing to Hunter New Eng­land lab­o­ra­to­ries in 2026.

“I have a lot of faith in the hard work of the Fusion team over the last few years. We’ll man­age it step by step and we’ll get through the changes.

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