Tayla Ferguson and Logan Chapman began traineeships at NSW Health Pathology’s Gosford laboratory in 2024. They’re both excited about a future career in healthcare.

Logan (pic­tured above right) began a trainee­ship in Col­lec­tions at Gos­ford in June 2024, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly worked in hair­dress­ing and aged care.

She says after spend­ing a lot of time in hos­pi­tal after her son was born, she realised her career goals had changed, and she want­ed to work in hos­pi­tals to help people.

“I love work­ing here at Gos­ford and have learnt so much in a short time,” Logan said.

“It feels like a fam­i­ly, and I don’t want to leave.”

She says jug­gling full-time work and fam­i­ly has been a chal­lenge, but she’s had a great sup­port network.

“I’ve been sup­port­ed through­out my trainee­ship and I’m always will­ing to learn more. I love mak­ing patients smile and I feel like I am mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to their expe­ri­ence in the hospital.

“I love going to work every­day and now that I’ve com­plet­ed my Cer­tifi­cate III in Pathol­o­gy Col­lec­tion, I’ll be look­ing to get work in the hospital.”

Col­lec­tions Man­ag­er, Stacey McK­in­non says Logan was a per­fect fit for the Gos­ford col­lec­tions team.

“Logan clear­ly enjoyed all that she has learned, fin­ish­ing her TAFE units in just over 3 months,” Stacey said.

“It hasn’t been easy chang­ing careers and being a mum of 2, but Logan has tack­led the trainee­ship with ease.

“We are excit­ed to see where this trainee­ship takes her!”

Tay­la Fer­gu­son (pic­tured left) also began her trainee­ship at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy in June 2024, hop­ing it would be a great way to get expe­ri­ence work­ing in the health sys­tem and gain a qual­i­fi­ca­tion. She is cur­rent­ly study­ing a Cer­tifi­cate III in Pathol­o­gy Collection.

She’s always had a pas­sion for help­ing peo­ple and was inter­est­ed in nurs­ing or becom­ing a paramedic.

“I am so glad I did the trainee­ship as it has allowed me to work and study and see if I want to go down a nurs­ing or para­medic path­way,” she said.

“I now have a clear view of how to plan for my next steps with work and study.”

Tay­la will be qual­i­fied to con­tin­ue work­ing in pathol­o­gy and says it’s been a valu­able path­way into more study.

“I would rec­om­mend a trainee­ship to any­one. Espe­cial­ly before jump­ing into four years at uni if you are not quite sure what you want to do.”

Col­lec­tions train­er at Gos­ford, Claire Pad­gett, says Tay­la proved to be a fast learn­er, ask­ing lots of rel­e­vant ques­tions along the way.

“Tay­la came to us in her first year out of school, but she was keen to learn,” Claire said.

“She spent 8 weeks with us pri­or to start­ing TAFE, and in that short time Tay­la had learned to col­lect blood inde­pen­dent­ly, as well as gen­er­al admin duties with­in the clinic.

“She fits in real­ly well with the team and we wish her all the best with what­ev­er comes next.”

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