Sunita Goundar says her decision to move from Sydney to Walgett in northern NSW was about giving back to the community but has also changed her life for the better.

Suni­ta took up the role of Lab­o­ra­to­ry Man­ag­er at Wal­gett in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

“I’d been work­ing in pathol­o­gy in Syd­ney for almost 20 years, the last 14 with NSW Health Pathol­o­gy,” Suni­ta explains.

“I’m from Fiji orig­i­nal­ly and when you come to a coun­try like Aus­tralia to study and work, it gives you so many priv­i­leges, and you just want to give back because Aus­tralia has giv­en me so much.”

Suni­ta loves explor­ing region­al and rur­al Aus­tralia. A few years ago, on a trip to region­al Queens­land, she got talk­ing to some locals about how hard it was to access health­care and realised she want­ed to help.

“I actu­al­ly felt that I could do some­thing, this was some­thing I could do to help small­er communities.”

Does she miss liv­ing in a city the size of Syd­ney, where she has a net­work of friends and family?

“Not at all! Wal­gett is a beau­ti­ful place, the peo­ple are very friend­ly. I have col­leagues who arrive every morn­ing at 6am and we all go for a morn­ing walk togeth­er. Every­one here is like a fam­i­ly, not like col­leagues,” Suni­ta says.

“I make friends very quick­ly, and unlike Syd­ney where you don’t even know your neigh­bours, here, every­one knows every­one. My health has also improved. I have asth­ma and the air here is just so much clean­er and fresh­er than Sydney.

“Of course it’s very dif­fer­ent to Syd­ney, but I was very clear in my think­ing that I am here for a pur­pose, and I am hap­py to be here.”

Suni­ta admits she was afraid of one thing mov­ing to region­al NSW – snakes.

“In my first cou­ple of months I saw a cou­ple of east­ern brown snakes. But you know what? I’m not scared any­more because if you leave them alone they don’t actu­al­ly harm you.”

Suni­ta says she was lucky to get accom­mo­da­tion near the hos­pi­tal, as Wal­gett is no dif­fer­ent to oth­er region­al areas where rental hous­ing is in short supply.

“I’m only one minute away from work – a very short com­mute! We have a gym here as well, so I have every­thing I need close by.”

Suni­ta says the Wal­gett lab­o­ra­to­ry has a range of ser­vices and the work is challenging.

“We’ve got a bio­chem­istry depart­ment, a haema­tol­ogy depart­ment, we also do blood trans­fu­sion and recent­ly we’ve been deal­ing with more com­pli­cat­ed cas­es for the blood bank.

“If there is an MTP (Mas­sive Trans­fu­sion Pro­to­col) we are here dis­pens­ing bloods, not just local­ly, but also for sur­round­ing areas.

“We have a col­lec­tion cen­tre at Light­ning Ridge and we also serve Col­larenabri Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal, the AMS (Abo­rig­i­nal Med­ical Ser­vice) and we are also help­ing Bre­war­ri­na with lab testing.”

Suni­ta says NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has pro­vid­ed a great net­work of men­tors and sup­port­ive man­agers since she arrived in Walgett.

“In six months, I nev­er expect­ed to grow so much and I should give cred­it to Ben Alchin (Senior Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er for West­ern NSW and Far West) for link­ing me with so many great peo­ple in the organ­i­sa­tion who have helped me.”

Sunita’s advice to some­one con­sid­er­ing a tree change?

“They shouldn’t over­think it – just take the leap! Wal­gett is a long way from Syd­ney, but I do not regret one day that I made this deci­sion. I am very grate­ful to be work­ing here, because I love it here.”

Incentives to move to regional NSW

Han­nah Bev­eridge is NSW Health Pathology’s Region­al Tal­ent Acqui­si­tion Spe­cial­ist and says she loves hear­ing about staff who have had a suc­cess­ful career change into the regions.

“Suni­ta was able to take advan­tage of NSW Health’s Rur­al Health Work­force Incen­tive Scheme (RWIS) which offers finan­cial bonus­es for health staff and new employ­ees tak­ing up jobs in region­al parts of the state,” Han­nah said.

“It’s designed to attract and retain staff to region­al, rur­al and remote NSW. Our ‘hard to fill’ posi­tions and ‘crit­i­cal vacan­cies’ across these loca­tions are incen­tivised via a fort­night­ly allowance, which is worth between $10,000 and $5,000 per annum depend­ing on the loca­tion, pro-rata for part timers.”

Han­nah says one of the biggest chal­lenges in attract­ing new employ­ees to rur­al and region­al areas is the per­cep­tion that you need to live and work in a big­ger metro area to grow and fur­ther your career.

“Sunita’s sto­ry is exact­ly what it’s all about! Her pas­sion to help her com­mu­ni­ty ignites excite­ment and inspires others.

“Career growth, health improve­ments as well as the impacts she is hav­ing to the Wal­gett com­mu­ni­ty, is a suc­cess for every­one. Keep­ing our region­al work­force healthy means our com­mu­ni­ties have access to local health­care and time­ly results.”

Inter­est­ed in a job in rur­al or region­al NSW?

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