Closing the Gap

Closing the Gap

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Celebrating the inspiring winners of our 2022 NSW Health Pathology Awards

Celebrating the inspiring winners of our 2022 NSW Health Pathology Awards

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We’re proud to share the latest edition of NSW Health Pathology’s Compass magazine – out now.

It is a bumper spe­cial edi­tion cel­e­brat­ing the inspir­ing win­ners of our NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Awards – the peo­ple who make our organ­i­sa­tion great and go above and beyond for the peo­ple of NSW.

Go behind the scenes and learn about some of the amaz­ing pub­lic pathol­o­gy and foren­sic med­i­cine and sci­ence work we do every day. We care. We con­nect. We pioneer.

It also gives us a peek inside the event with some of our high­light pho­tos included.

Please take some time to read, share and cel­e­brate our pub­li­ca­tion with your friends, fam­i­ly and col­leagues, and join the rest of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy in once again con­grat­u­lat­ing our recent NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Award winners.

Read our mag­a­zine in flip­book for­mat here.

Mag1

Australia Day honours for leading genetic pathologist Professor Edwin Kirk

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A massive congratulations to our very own Professor Edwin Kirk, appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2023 Australia Day Honours List.

Pro­fes­sor Edwin Kirk was sneak­ing in a quick check of his work emails while on a fam­i­ly hol­i­day when he found out he was to be appoint­ed a Mem­ber of the Order of Aus­tralia (AM) in the 2023 Aus­tralia Day Hon­ours List.

He said he was star­tled and delight­ed in equal mea­sure at the honour.

“I had felt a bit guilty about check­ing my email – but when I saw that par­tic­u­lar mes­sage, I was very glad that I had!” he said.

Pro­fes­sor Kirk works in the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Genomics Lab­o­ra­to­ry at Rand­wick and is both a clin­i­cal geneti­cist and genet­ic pathol­o­gist – a rare combination.

He has been recog­nised for his sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to genet­ic pathol­o­gy and clin­i­cal genet­ics, and to med­ical research.

Among his many achieve­ments and appoint­ments, Pro­fes­sor Kirk is cur­rent­ly co-leader in a ground-break­ing nation­al repro­duc­tive genet­ic car­ri­er screen­ing study known as Mackenzie’s Mis­sion.

In recent years, thou­sands of Aus­tralian cou­ples tak­ing part in the study have been screened for about 750 severe, child­hood-onset genet­ic con­di­tions, giv­ing them infor­ma­tion about their like­li­hood of hav­ing a child with any of these genet­ic conditions.

Prof Kirk cred­its Rachael and Jon­ny Casel­la for their tire­less advo­ca­cy in mak­ing the project pos­si­ble. Macken­zie, after whom the project is named, was their daughter.

“When we start­ed Mackenzie’s Mis­sion, the goal was to bring car­ri­er screen­ing to all Aus­tralian cou­ples who wish to access it, free of charge,” Prof Kirk said.

“That remains the goal, and we are still work­ing towards it.”

Prof Kirk said he jumped at the chance to work in genet­ics after com­plet­ing his ini­tial clin­i­cal train­ing in paediatrics.

“I noticed that wher­ev­er I was work­ing, any time there was an inter­est­ing or chal­leng­ing diag­nos­tic prob­lem, the geneti­cists were called in,” he said.

“This was in the ear­ly to mid 1990s and even then it was obvi­ous to an out­sider that the pace of dis­cov­ery in genet­ics was rapid and accel­er­at­ing. It seemed like a field full of possibilities.”

Prof Kirk has authored or co-authored more than 125 sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions dur­ing his two-decade long career in genetics.

In 2020 he pub­lished a book “The Genes That Make Us: human sto­ries from a rev­o­lu­tion in med­i­cine”, in which he shares expe­ri­ences and anec­dotes from his career, while recount­ing the his­to­ry of genet­ic med­i­cine and explor­ing its future potential.

“Our abil­i­ty to make diag­noses in chil­dren with rare genet­ic con­di­tions is dra­mat­i­cal­ly bet­ter than when I start­ed; this is very reward­ing, both in the lab and at the bed­side,” he said.

“A diag­no­sis can have a very large, pos­i­tive impact for a fam­i­ly in all sorts of ways.”

Forensic science contributes to national recall of poppy seeds

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The Forensic Toxicology team at NSW Health Pathology’s Forensic and Analytical Science Service (FASS) played an important role in discovering why commercially available poppy seeds led to 12 hospitalisations across NSW.

After a series of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions relat­ed to the use of large amounts of pop­py seeds in Novem­ber 2022, FASS sci­en­tists con­duct­ed foren­sic tox­i­col­o­gy test­ing on blood sam­ples from sev­er­al patients and found unusu­al­ly high lev­els of a chem­i­cal called thebaine.

The­baine, whilst unharm­ful at low­er dos­es, has been known to cause severe ill­ness at high­er lev­els. Symp­toms of the­baine tox­i­c­i­ty include seizures, severe mus­cle pains, severe mus­cle spasms, cramp­ing, stiff­ness, dizzi­ness, abnor­mal move­ments, or car­diac arrest.

While the first cas­es were detect­ed in Queens­land, agen­cies in Vic­to­ria led the inves­ti­ga­tion into the the­baine poi­son­ings. FASS, in con­junc­tion with mul­ti­ple health agen­cies in NSW, used their exper­tise to increase the evi­dence and pro­vid­ed advo­ca­cy which helped lead to major super­mar­ket chains tak­ing pop­py seeds off the shelves and issu­ing a recall.

FASS’s speedy inves­ti­ga­tion was made pos­si­ble with cut­ting-edge analy­sers called Liq­uid Chro­matog­ra­phy Quadru­pole Time-of-Flight Mass Spec­trom­e­try (LC-QTOF-MS). These high­ly sen­si­tive instru­ments detect­ed high lev­els of the­baine and allowed the cross ref­er­enc­ing with inter­na­tion­al library data­bas­es and cer­ti­fied ref­er­ence stan­dards avail­able at FASS.

Foren­sic Tox­i­col­o­gy Senior Sci­en­tist Cather­ine McDon­ald said that a cul­ture of col­lab­o­ra­tion between dif­fer­ent NSW Health agen­cies con­tributed to a suc­cess­ful outcome.
“Pub­lic Health works close­ly with food safe­ty depart­ments in food poi­son­ing cas­es, how­ev­er it’s unusu­al for drug inves­ti­ga­tions to lead to food safe­ty recalls,” she said.

“Col­lab­o­ra­tive inves­ti­ga­tions between inter­state Pub­lic Health depart­ments, food author­i­ties, poi­sons infor­ma­tion cen­tres and foren­sic tox­i­col­o­gy labs was cru­cial in iden­ti­fy­ing the cause of ill­ness in 37 patients around Australia.”

This col­lab­o­ra­tion was fos­tered by the Pre­scrip­tion, Recre­ation­al and Illic­it Sub­stance Eval­u­a­tion (PRISE) pro­gram – a net­work includ­ing NSW Health Pathology’s FASS, NSW Poi­sons Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre (PIC) and the NSW Min­istry of Health – which allowed for the exten­sive blood test­ing vital to the investigation.

Double celebration at Dubbo for David and Diane

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It was a double celebration for our Dubbo lab the week before Christmas.

Diane Ben­nett is retir­ing from NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Dub­bo after 28 years.

Diane has been the Senior Sci­en­tist of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy at Dub­bo since 2015 and is retir­ing at the end of 2022.

Known to her col­leagues as a ‘micro guru’, she says she most enjoys know­ing that she has made a dif­fer­ence in the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of patients.
“You’re not just a machine pump­ing out results,” she said.

“Some­times you come up with rare things, and you find hid­den gems; the zebra among the horses.”

Pic­tured with her is David Par­ler, who has been work­ing at Dub­bo as an assis­tant for two days per week for the past 20 years.

Every year the Dub­bo staff put togeth­er a Christ­mas ham­per for David, who con­sid­ers the lab a sig­nif­i­cant part of his life and the staff part of his extend­ed family.

This year was the first year since the COVID pan­dem­ic the staff could come togeth­er and present this ham­per to David per­son­al­ly. He said he was thrilled to receive this gen­er­ous gift.

Diane Ben­nett says she plans to use her retire­ment to trav­el around Aus­tralia, includ­ing see­ing fam­i­ly and friends in West­ern Australia.

Best of luck with the com­ing adven­ture Diane and thank you from all of us at NSW Health Pathology!

 

Meet Emily – pathology courier driver

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Meet Emily, one of NSW Health Pathology’s newest courier drivers.

Deliv­er­ing pre­cious sam­ples from our col­lec­tion cen­tres to lab­o­ra­to­ries for test­ing, often over rugged ter­rain and in all con­di­tions, so you get the results you need quickly.

 

Get to know Emily

What is your job title?
NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Courier

How long have you been with NSWHP?
Four months

What attract­ed you to the role?
The diver­si­ty of tasks, places and peo­ple I see every day. No two days are the same, and this job means I trav­el around the city of New­cas­tle, region­al Hunter Val­ley and even fur­ther up the north coast to Port Mac­quar­ie to trans­port pre­cious car­go. Every­where I go there are new peo­ple to meet and inter­est­ing things to learn about the jour­ney of sam­ples from col­lec­tion to analysis.

What do you like best about your job?
Before I start­ed, I did­n’t realise how much work goes into mak­ing sure all the thou­sands of sam­ples col­lect­ed every day get to the right place in crit­i­cal time frames. The amaz­ing peo­ple I work with, as well as the team that analy­ses the sam­ples, work tire­less­ly to keep pathol­o­gy test­ing run­ning for the peo­ple of NSW. I enjoy being part of a large team that qui­et­ly keeps a very impor­tant part of the health sys­tem run­ning on a day-to-day basis.

What are you most look­ing for­ward to over the holidays?
Spend­ing time catch­ing up with fam­i­ly and friends and tak­ing my dog to the beach!

Are you inter­est­ed in join­ing the NSWHP team?
Vis­it our careers page to find out more.

Merry Christmas from NSW Health Pathology

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Wishing you a wonderful festive season from NSW Health Pathology staff!

It’s been anoth­er chal­leng­ing year for our teams right across the state.

Our won­der­ful pathol­o­gists, sci­en­tists, tech­ni­cians, couri­ers, col­lec­tors and pathol­o­gy sup­port staff have worked dili­gent­ly through fires, floods and a glob­al pan­dem­ic to deliv­er qual­i­ty pathol­o­gy and foren­sic ser­vices to you – our patients and com­mu­ni­ties right across NSW.

Many NSW Health Pathol­o­gy ser­vices oper­ate over the Christ­mas and New Year peri­od. Find and con­tact your local col­lec­tion cen­tre for more information.

From all of us here at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, have a very hap­py Christ­mas and a safe and healthy 2023.

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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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