NSW Health Pathology’s RITE values were on show in early 2022, when staff in Campbelltown, Bankstown and Liverpool showed their commitment to teamwork and hit the road to help their colleagues in Bowral.
Bowral has a multidisciplinary laboratory with a small team which services two hospitals in the Southern Highlands. In mid-March, Bowral faced critical staff shortages, which was causing fatigue and a decrease in staff morale. On top of their usual shifts, staff were maintaining the on-call services out of hours, with call-backs a regular occurrence.
The laboratory managers at Bankstown and Campbelltown collaborated with Operations to jump into action, with a plan to deploy staff between three laboratories to allow the staff at Bowral some much needed respite.
With oversight and support from Senior Operations Manager for South West Sydney, Parth Nanavati, the operation saw Campbelltown staff provide daily coverage to Bowral laboratory while Bankstown and Liverpool staff backfilled their absences to ensure a continuation of services at all laboratories.
This was an exciting team building opportunity where staff were able to work in laboratories they hadn’t visited before. Recent standardisation of equipment and middleware meant staff could move seamlessly between laboratories. The arrangement allowed people to put a face to a name at the end of the phone and see how the other laboratories functioned, bringing learned experiences back to their own laboratories.
The Bowral team was very grateful to see how willing their colleagues were to help. Many staff members went above and beyond, with staff commuting over 2,000kms over the course of the month to cover shifts, even completing overtime to meet service demands and ensure continuation of high quality, patient-centred services.