Closing the Gap

Closing the Gap

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“Our work is like solving diagnostic puzzles”

“Our work is like solving diagnostic puzzles”

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Meet Dr Leili Moayed Alaei, an Anatomical Pathology Registrar at our Royal Prince Alfred Hospital laboratory.

Leili works at our new­ly rede­vel­oped Tis­sue Pathol­o­gy and Diag­nos­tic Oncol­o­gy Depart­ment at RPA and has been with NSW Health Pathol­o­gy for five years.

“Our work is like solv­ing diag­nos­tic puz­zles. We have a cru­cial role in patient care, even though we are often hid­den behind closed doors,” she says.

“We pro­vide crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion on diag­no­sis, dis­ease pro­gres­sion and prog­no­sis that directs clin­i­cal care.”

She says her typ­i­cal day begins with attend­ing a morn­ing tuto­r­i­al, dur­ing which the con­sul­tants share inter­est­ing cases.

“As reg­is­trars, we have three dif­fer­ent duties: macro­scop­ic exam­i­na­tion and dis­sec­tion of spec­i­mens, hold­ing the fresh/frozen phone and report­ing cas­es. Each day, I’ll be assigned to one of these duties.”

On cut days, reg­is­trars are deal­ing with a wide range of spec­i­mens from small biop­sies to more com­pli­cat­ed cas­es like pelvic exen­ter­a­tion or leg amputation.

“Han­dling the spec­i­mens requires knowl­edge of anato­my and pathol­o­gy, along with an under­stand­ing of stag­ing and prog­nos­tic fea­tures to ensure that sam­pled tis­sue ade­quate­ly demon­strates these aspects,” Leili explains.

“On our report­ing days we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to report these cas­es along­side our consultants.”

What is a frozen sec­tion? We’re glad you asked!

“Frozen sec­tions are often per­formed dur­ing sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures to pro­vide rapid diag­nos­tic infor­ma­tion to guide the sur­geon’s next steps such as assess­ing mar­gin sta­tus or mak­ing diag­noses. The tis­sue is quick­ly frozen, processed, and eval­u­at­ed short­ly after­ward. This is all hap­pen­ing while the patient is still under­go­ing surgery.”

A woman in a laboratory wearing a lab coat and protective eye glasses smiles at Health Minister Ryan Park who is looking at the workspace.
Leili met the NSW Min­is­ter for Health Ryan Park when he toured the new lab­o­ra­to­ry at RPA in March 2024.

Leili says she loves the vari­ety of tasks, as well as work­ing along­side con­sul­tants and attend­ing mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team meetings.

“I love the cama­raderie with­in our pathol­o­gy team – we are like a fam­i­ly, always ready to sup­port each oth­er,” she said.

“The sense of being part of a team that plays such a vital role in health­care is deeply reward­ing and fulfilling.”

The team at the lab even takes time out to socialise after work.

“We have a What­sApp group for our RPA crew, which includes some of our con­sul­tants, sci­en­tists, and reg­is­trars. We reg­u­lar­ly organ­ise out­ings for din­ner, movies, and oth­er recre­ation­al activ­i­ties together.”

Leili says one of the hard­est parts of the job is prepar­ing for anatom­ic pathol­o­gy spe­cial­ist exams, along­side her clin­i­cal duties.

“It’s one of the trick­i­est parts of the job. How­ev­er, with a sol­id team to sup­port each oth­er, it becomes much more manageable.”

Leili says if she could learn some­thing new, it would be work­ing with elec­tron microscopy!

Going solar at FASS Lidcombe!

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Work is nearing completion on a project to install 557 solar panels and a battery storage system at the Forensic Medicine & Coroners Court Complex at Lidcombe.

We’re excit­ed to be part of this fan­tas­tic sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tive led by our Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS).

In 2022, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy com­mis­sioned a study on the poten­tial for solar pow­er at the new­ly opened Foren­sic Med­i­cine & Coro­ners Court Com­plex (FMCCC).

It found the build­ing had enough roof space to accom­mo­date a 348kw solar pan­el sys­tem, gen­er­at­ing an aver­age of 423,700 kilo­watt hours of pow­er each year.

Once the sys­tem is ful­ly func­tion­ing, we are expect­ing a 20% reduc­tion in our annu­al pow­er bills for the site and to save an aver­age of 88 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions each year.

Work on the project kicked off in Decem­ber 2023 and includes a solar pow­er back-up bat­tery specif­i­cal­ly for the Foren­sic Med­i­cine ser­vice to pro­vide pow­er to crit­i­cal equip­ment after busi­ness hours.

FASS Facil­i­ties Ser­vices Coor­di­na­tor, Renae Cur­rer says a mas­sive crane arrived on site in Jan­u­ary this year to begin the task of lift­ing the hun­dreds of pan­els and oth­er equip­ment onto the roof.

A large red crane lifts a wooden crate in the car park of the FMCCC.
Lift­ing the pan­els into place in Jan­u­ary 2024.

“Our build­ing occu­pants were real­ly excit­ed to see this work start­ing,” Renae said.

“We even had chil­dren from around the neigh­bour­hood watch­ing on as the crane swung into action.

“We’ve found this sort of project has a lot of buy-in from our peo­ple, who are keen to see the organ­i­sa­tion lead­ing the way when it comes to envi­ron­men­tal sustainability.”

The con­trac­tors worked through­out the end of a very hot sum­mer, lay­ing all the nec­es­sary cables, trays and all 557 solar pan­els on the var­i­ous roof spaces at the FMCCC.

Exter­nal works are now com­plete, and the sys­tem is now await­ing con­nec­tion to the grid and testing.

We’d espe­cial­ly like to thank our col­leagues at the Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ties and Jus­tice for their coop­er­a­tion and assis­tance in plan­ning the roof works, and for their under­stand­ing dur­ing some of the nois­i­est peri­ods of work!

The solar project is set to be com­plete by the end of June 2024, when all agen­cies with­in the facil­i­ty will ben­e­fit from solar pow­er onsite.

Heartfelt thanks for John Hunter Hospital chemical pathologist

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A patient has reached out to express his thanks to one of our chemical pathologists, who became so concerned at his blood results, he called an ambulance in the middle of the night.

Craig Mur­phy lives on a rur­al prop­er­ty in the Upper Hunter Val­ley. He’d been feel­ing sick for a few weeks in ear­ly 2024 when he went for a blood test at NSW Health Pathology’s Mur­ru­run­di Hos­pi­tal col­lec­tion cen­tre to find out what was going on.

His results came to the atten­tion of the after-hours Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gist Dr Richard Rud­dell at our John Hunter Hos­pi­tal lab­o­ra­to­ry in Newcastle.

The lab has a big rur­al catch­ment, super­vis­ing lab­o­ra­to­ries at Armi­dale, Glen Innes, Inverell, Tam­worth, Port Mac­quar­ie, Kempsey, Taree, and Coffs Har­bour hospitals.

“This can some­times make con­tact­ing patients rather tricky,” Richard said.

“I think in this case, the Tam­worth lab had trou­ble con­tact­ing this patient’s GP, so as the on-call Chem­i­cal Pathol­o­gist I was called to assess the sever­i­ty and urgency of the bio­chem­i­cal abnormality.

“The blood results showed his potas­si­um was wor­ry­ing­ly high and his phone was switched off, so I had to pull out all the stops and send an ambu­lance to get him urgent care.”

Richard said the ambu­lance crew were “the real stars”, even­tu­al­ly man­ag­ing to locate Craig’s rur­al prop­er­ty at around mid­night with very lit­tle infor­ma­tion to go on.

“I think they had to knock and ask at sev­er­al near­by res­i­dences before they found him,” Richard said.

Craig Mur­phy called Richard back in the morn­ing to thank him for check­ing on his wel­fare and Richard was able to per­suade him to go to the hos­pi­tal and get his potas­si­um lev­els looked into.

“The pathol­o­gist took my phone call as he was hav­ing his cof­fee the next morn­ing,” Craig said.

“What a kind and thought­ful per­son he is. I want to pass on my heart­felt appre­ci­a­tion for the amaz­ing ser­vice he pro­vid­ed. He went above and beyond, and I think he prob­a­bly saved my life.

“I am feel­ing much bet­ter now and have reor­gan­ised my med­ica­tions which were caus­ing the problem.”

Richard insists it’s all part of the job but was chuffed to hear that Craig was on the mend.

“Even though the lab is some­what detached from the direct patient inter­ac­tions, I think of all the res­i­dents of the Hunter, New Eng­land and Mid North Coast as my patients,” he explains.

“We do what it takes to get them the care they need even if that means call­ing them late at night or send­ing an ambu­lance to their home if it’s needed.”

Take a look inside our new Tissue Pathology and Diagnostic Oncology Department at RPA!

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The Minister for Health Ryan Park has officially opened the Tissue Pathology and Diagnostic Oncology Department at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, part of the NSW Government’s $940m hospital redevelopment.

Patients across Syd­ney and beyond are ben­e­fit­ting from NSW Health Pathology’s new state-of-the-art Tis­sue Pathol­o­gy and Diag­nos­tic Oncol­o­gy depart­ment that has been offi­cial­ly opened as part of the Roy­al Prince Alfred Hos­pi­tal (RPA) Redevelopment.

The new Tis­sue Pathol­o­gy and Diag­nos­tic Oncol­o­gy Depart­ment, which began oper­at­ing in Novem­ber 2023, is deliv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty, future-focused care for patients, while pro­vid­ing staff with the lat­est design, equip­ment and sys­tem capa­bil­i­ties to man­age grow­ing demand.

The pur­pose-built depart­ment replaces the for­mer facil­i­ty at RPA, which last year processed over 48,000 patient sam­ples for a vari­ety of can­cer diag­nos­tic tests.

It fea­tures state-of-the-art equip­ment to per­form the lat­est can­cer diag­nos­tic test­ing and report on clin­i­cal cas­es, result­ing in improved turn­around times and improved patient care.

The Min­is­ter was shown the tech­nol­o­gy that allows our pathol­o­gists to con­nect via audio-visu­al link to RPA’s sur­geons while they are oper­at­ing, to give an imme­di­ate diagnosis.

The Minister looking at a microscope, while a surgeon appears on a video screen in the background.
The Min­is­ter is shown the tech­nol­o­gy that allows pathol­o­gists to com­mu­ni­cate with sur­geons as they operate.

The new loca­tion brings togeth­er the Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy and Cytol­ogy teams, tak­ing them clos­er to the Chris O’Brien Life­house, which will mean bet­ter response times for urgent test­ing of sam­ples for can­cer patients.

Chief Exec­u­tive of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Vanes­sa Janis­sen said the new facil­i­ty was a game-chang­er for bet­ter patient care.

“As the role of per­son­alised med­i­cine expands and starts to become rou­tine care, we are see­ing increas­ing demand and com­plex­i­ty in anatom­i­cal pathol­o­gy and cytol­ogy, and these facil­i­ties mean our teams at RPA are well placed to help meet this emerg­ing clin­i­cal need,” Ms Janis­sen said.

“The refur­bished facil­i­ty is also the work­place of 2024 Joint Aus­tralian of the Year, Pro­fes­sor Richard Scoly­er, a world-lead­ing melanoma pathol­o­gist whose work has helped to trans­form treat­ments and patient out­comes for this dead­ly form of skin cancer.”

At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Ms Janis­sen thanked the many peo­ple who worked to ensure the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry was com­mis­sioned on time.

“To our team’s cred­it, our ser­vices kept going and moved in stages to min­imise impact of the move on ser­vices and our patients,” she said.

“I heard sto­ries of staff com­ing in on their week­ends to coor­di­nate the move­ment of equip­ment, per­son­al items and ensure a seam­less transition.

“Thank you to Pro­fes­sor James Kench, Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor and Pro­fes­sor Ruta Gup­ta, Clin­i­cal Direc­tor – who have been instru­men­tal in lead­ing and over­see­ing this lab from the ear­ly con­cept plans to the world class facil­i­ty we have today,” Ms Janis­sen said.

Ruta Gupta in a laboratory being interviewed by a man holding a news microphone.
Prof Ruta Gup­ta being inter­viewed by a Sev­en News jour­nal­ist at the offi­cial opening.

“Also Bob­by Dim­itri­jovs­ki, Senior Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er, who has led our local team in such a col­lab­o­ra­tive way, and real­ly brought all the stake­hold­ers together.

“Thanks to Kris Avery, for­mer Lab Man­ag­er and Car­lie Wiers­ma, cur­rent Lab Man­ag­er, who have pro­vid­ed incred­i­ble sup­port to the team dur­ing all stages of the move.

“Thank you also to Dinah Con­stan­tine from our plan­ning team – your exper­tise was vital to the move being such a success.

“We are also so grate­ful to Health Infra­struc­ture and RPA Rede­vel­op­ment team, espe­cial­ly Samar Zakaria, Kather­ine Ben­nett, Kristi­na Zarkos, Eve Laing and Meenal Shar­ma, and to Brad Miller from Barpa Builders.

“The last few years have been an extra­or­di­nary time for all who work in health, includ­ing our ded­i­cat­ed pathol­o­gy staff who have worked tire­less­ly to meet the extra­or­di­nary demand. Every­one in our health sys­tem has con­tin­ued to show great resilience and innovation.

“I know this refur­bished facil­i­ty and enhanced space will bring many ben­e­fits to patients and their loved ones fac­ing some of their biggest chal­lenges, and I thank every­one involved for their ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment,” Ms Janis­sen said.

A group of people gather outside a purple brick building.
Staff gath­er to cel­e­brate with NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Chief Exec­u­tive Vanes­sa Janis­sen (front row 4th from right) and Syd­ney Local Health Dis­trict Chief Exec­u­tive Dr Tere­sa Ander­son (front row 3rd from right).

Investigating the chemicals in herbal medicines

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A forensic scientist at NSW Health Pathology has been granted funding to investigate the chemical characteristics of psychoactive plants, with the aim of improving public health and safety.

Giv­en the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of herbal med­ica­tions, foren­sic prac­ti­tion­ers are com­ing across plant-based phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals more often.

The Unit­ed Nations Office on Drugs and Crime voiced alarm in its 2019 World Drug Report on an increase in plant-psy­choac­tive drug seizures.

The Illic­it Drug Analy­sis Unit (IDAU) at NSW Health Pathology’s Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS) reg­u­lar­ly encoun­ters herbal plant mate­r­i­al seized by the NSW Police.

Senior Foren­sic Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer at the IDAU Pragna Gaur says it’s crit­i­cal to pro­vide reli­able research for assess­ing plant-based alka­loids that are encoun­tered in foren­sic and pub­lic health contexts.

“I recent­ly secured a grant from the Aus­tralia New Zealand Polic­ing Advi­so­ry Agency (ANZPAA) Nation­al Insti­tute of Foren­sic Sci­ence (NIFS) to assist my research project relat­ing to the chem­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion of plants used for men­tal resilience and well­be­ing,” she said.

“My research is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between West­ern Syd­ney University’s Nation­al Insti­tute of Com­ple­men­tary Med­i­cine (NICM) and IDAU FASS. It will focus on the phy­to­chem­i­cal pro­fil­ing of botan­i­cal plant mate­r­i­al used to treat neu­ro­log­i­cal ail­ments (such as depres­sion, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, and sleep­less­ness) and men­tal resilience.

“This includes plant species from the plant groups Fabaceae (Aca­cia spp.), Solanaceae (eg, Datu­ra spp), Cac­taceae (eg, Lophopho­ra William­sii), and Con­volvu­laceae (eg, Argyreia ner­vosa and Ipo­moea spp.).

“Some of the plants I work with are more com­mon­ly known as wat­tle trees, Morn­ing Glo­ry, Angel’s Trum­pets, and dif­fer­ent vari­eties of cactus.”

 

A woman's hand holding a bunch of leaves and yellow flowers.
Aca­cia plant mate­r­i­al col­lect­ed for the project.

Ms Gaur aims to devel­op a com­pre­hen­sive chem­i­cal pro­file of the plant extract and iden­ti­fy known nat­ur­al alka­loids that have been demon­strat­ed to affect the cen­tral ner­vous system.

“My research will lay the ground­work for devel­op­ing and improv­ing method­olo­gies for iden­ti­fy­ing alka­loids like trypt­a­mine, mesca­line, and tropine, allow­ing us to pro­vide bet­ter ser­vices to our stake­hold­ers and the foren­sic community.

“Over­all, our nov­el find­ings will help to improve pub­lic health and safety.”

She says many com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to use herbal plant mate­r­i­al as a med­i­cine despite a lack of research.

“Despite their long and well-estab­lished use, our under­stand­ing of herbal med­i­cines’ chem­i­cal com­po­nents are not well known and require fur­ther research,” Ms Gaur said.

“To prove their safe­ty and effi­ca­cy to the com­mu­ni­ty and to pro­vide a safe, inex­pen­sive, and read­i­ly acces­si­ble alter­na­tive to mod­ern med­i­cines, more sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies are essential.”

Training the pathology healthcare workers of the future to reflect our diverse community

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NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is excit­ed to be tak­ing on 21 new trainees from mar­gin­alised and dis­ad­van­taged groups, as part of the NSW Government’s com­mit­ment to employ an addi­tion­al 1000 appren­tices and trainees across the state.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy has received fund­ing for 21 trainee­ship posi­tions to be filled in our col­lec­tion cen­tres, lab­o­ra­to­ries and in administration.

It’s a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple look­ing for an entry path into Australia’s largest pub­lic pathol­o­gy service.

In recog­ni­tion of the chal­lenges that job­seek­ers from Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander com­mu­ni­ties or those liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty face, we are tar­get­ing can­di­dates from these areas. This pro­gram will aim to assist mar­gin­alised and dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties into long term career oppor­tu­ni­ties with NSW Health Pathology.

We’ll be pro­vid­ing sup­port that com­bines for­mal edu­ca­tion by way of qual­i­fi­ca­tion and employ­ment, togeth­er with cul­tur­al sup­port for our trainees and teams.

About the traineeship program:

• It is man­aged by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion (DET)
• DET and our Abo­rig­i­nal and Dis­abil­i­ty sup­port part­ners: MobReady, Real Futures, Indi­ge­co and MTC, will pro­vide NSWHP sup­port ser­vices as required for recruit­ment, onboard­ing and/or ongo­ing sup­port to the trainees and their supervisors.
• 21 Trainee­ship posi­tions have been approved for NSWHP. We hope to expand the pro­gram in the years to come, and offer place­ments to more sites across NSWHP
• Trainee­ships have either 12-month or 24-month appoint­ment terms
• We will look to tar­get can­di­dates from dis­ad­van­taged groups includ­ing peo­ple liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty and Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islanders.
• All appren­tice­ships and trainee­ships are estab­lished by com­plet­ing a Nation­al Train­ing Con­tract (NTC). This NTC is a legal­ly bind­ing agree­ment between the employ­er and appren­tice or trainee
• The nom­i­nat­ed Reg­is­tered Train­ing Organ­i­sa­tion (RTO) is TAFE NSW.
• All Trainees will work on the job 4‑days per week and 1 day per week will par­tic­i­pate in for­mal train­ing and education

The suc­cess­ful appli­cants will be sup­port­ed dur­ing the onboard­ing process and our team will pro­vide post place­ment sup­port to every trainee as they work towards gain­ing their qualifications.

Connect with us

NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land across NSW whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the state.

Aboriginal Workforce Development Closing the Gap

NSW Health Pathology acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land across NSW whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We would like to pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the state.

Aboriginal Workforce Development Closing the Gap
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