Con­tin­u­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment (CPD) oppor­tu­ni­ties are crit­i­cal for our sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal staff, help­ing them main­tain and improve their knowl­edge, skills and expertise.
How­ev­er, geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion, busi­ness as usu­al demands, COVID-19 test­ing and pan­dem­ic-relat­ed social and pro­fes­sion­al iso­la­tion have made it dif­fi­cult to pre­pare and facil­i­tate much need­ed CPD activ­i­ties in recent years.

The Sci­en­tif­ic & Tech­ni­cal Statewide Edu­ca­tion Series was estab­lished to over­come these chal­lenges. This statewide edu­ca­tion pro­gram uses col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide vir­tu­al ses­sions, which have been deliv­ered by more than 100 of our lab­o­ra­to­ry and clin­i­cal dis­ci­pline experts from over 21 sites and sev­er­al LHDs, in addi­tion to exter­nal presenters.

The pro­gram lever­ages the incred­i­ble skills, abil­i­ties and pas­sion of our peo­ple, break­ing down dis­ci­pli­nary, hier­ar­chi­cal, geo­graph­i­cal and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers to pro­vide equal access to CPD for over 4,000 tech­ni­cians, sci­en­tists, lab­o­ra­to­ry man­agers, reg­is­trars, pathol­o­gists and researchers. 

The series has gone from strength to strength, start­ing as a sin­gle dis­ci­pline pro­gram and grow­ing as demand and inter­est increased. In 2022, more than 100 ses­sions are sched­uled across 9 dis­ci­pline areas includ­ing haema­tol­ogy, chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy, mol­e­c­u­lar genet­ics, cyto­ge­net­ics, mass spec­troscopy, anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy, point of care test­ing, trans­fu­sion and ear­ly career research. More than 1,000 atten­dances have already been logged in 2022 so far.

The pro­gram at its core is about sup­port­ing growth, devel­op­ment and upskilling of our sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal peo­ple through knowl­edge shar­ing. It has been enor­mous­ly well-received and is a true exam­ple of edu­ca­tion with­out borders.