What do Forensic Pathologists do?

There is a short­age of Foren­sic Pathol­o­gists across Aus­tralia and globally.

Our Foren­sic Pathol­o­gists sup­port bereaved fam­i­lies’ need for answers as well as the Coroner’s role in deliv­er­ing jus­tice and improv­ing the health and safe­ty of com­mu­ni­ties across NSW.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Senior Foren­sic Pathol­o­gist Dr Kendall Bai­ly likens the role to a ‘doc­tor for deceased people’:
“If you were ill, you’d go and see your gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er, they would do some tests and they’d tell you what was wrong with you. I do the same thing except my patients are deceased. I need to get the his­to­ry from police offi­cers and fam­i­ly mem­bers. I then do an exam­i­na­tion which is an autop­sy. We have a CT scan­ner so we will do some med­ical imag­ing. And then I will do some tests and work out what the cause and man­ner of death is and write a report.”

Med­ical stu­dent Kasia Mar­ciszews­ki spent an elec­tive term with our Foren­sic Med­i­cine service:
“It’s just like being in a surgery; it’s a per­son. You can actu­al­ly see real pathol­o­gy, things that we learn about in Med School and talk about all the time: ‘here is a blocked coro­nary artery’, ‘here is heart dis­ease’, ‘here’s can­cer’. You can phys­i­cal­ly see it rather than learn­ing about it in a text book.”

Learn what it’s like to be a NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Foren­sic Pathologist.