Supporting the community in Lismore floods

In February 2022, Lismore and the Northern Rivers region was hit by torrential rain that saw the Wilson River rise two metres above its previous record height.. NSW Health Pathology’s Lismore team worked tirelessly to ensure uninterrupted service for the community despite their own personal challenges.

Flood waters lapped at the front step of our Lis­more lab­o­ra­to­ry in Feb­ru­ary 2022 as lev­ee banks broke and large areas of the town went under water.

Staff sand­bagged the door­way and moved equip­ment to high­er ground so test­ing could con­tin­ue if the lab flooded.

Hous­es and busi­ness­es were destroyed leav­ing many peo­ple home­less, includ­ing some of our NSW Health Pathol­o­gy col­leagues who lost their homes and pos­ses­sions. Roads were cut leav­ing oth­er col­leagues strand­ed for extend­ed peri­ods. Near­by towns were iso­lat­ed pre­vent­ing spec­i­mens reach­ing our lab.

The town had­n’t even begun to recov­er when in March, the riv­er broke its banks again, inun­dat­ing the town and hin­der­ing the clean-up and any progress that had been achieved.

Heart­break­ing as it was, our Lis­more team was undaunt­ed because they knew peo­ple were depend­ing on them to con­tin­ue to pro­vide vital pub­lic pathol­o­gy services.

Gal­vanised by dis­as­ter and ener­gised by the cama­raderie of their close team and gen­er­ous sup­port from the teams at our Tweed, Grafton and Coffs Har­bour labs, they kept going.

Staff who were able to get to work cov­ered for col­leagues who were iso­lat­ed, work­ing their shifts to main­tain ser­vices. They part­nered with emer­gency ser­vices to retrieve spec­i­mens from iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, and with Lifeblood to restock blood supplies.

Despite the chaos, iso­la­tion and dis­rup­tion to their per­son­al lives, the team worked tire­less­ly to ensure undis­rupt­ed diag­nos­tic ser­vice for our North­ern Rivers patients and clinicians.

After a 39-year career in public pathology, Margaret Holschier has closed the door of our Deniliquin Lab for the last time.

After a 39-year career in pub­lic pathol­o­gy, Mar­garet Holschi­er has closed the door of NSW Health Pathology’s Deniliquin Lab for the last time on 1 July 2022.

Mar­garet has been a famil­iar face around the lab and Deniliquin Health Ser­vice, hav­ing worked many roles includ­ing Super­vis­ing Sci­en­tist, Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist and Tech­ni­cal Officer.

Mar­garet was drawn to work­ing in pathol­o­gy after a fam­i­ly mem­ber devel­oped a blood dis­ease and it made her curi­ous about this less­er-known profession.

Reflect­ing on her reward­ing career, Mar­garet is proud of the high stan­dard of pathol­o­gy test­ing and her role in look­ing after peo­ple –help­ing the doc­tors, nurs­ing staff and allied health teams to care for patients, and just being there to care for local peo­ple (at all hours of the day and night).

Mar­garet has pro­vid­ed an invalu­able rur­al and region­al per­spec­tive as part of NSW Health Pathology’s Micro­bi­ol­o­gy Clin­i­cal Stream, and she’s wran­gled COVID-19 and the logis­tics of pro­vid­ing test­ing in South­ern NSW, and across state borders.

We appre­ci­ate and thank you Mar­garet for your com­pas­sion, ded­i­ca­tion, sup­port and friendship.

We wish you a long and hap­py retire­ment that involves plen­ty of read­ing, sleep­ing, learn­ing the piano, trav­el­ling and crack­ing the dai­ly wordle!

A four-decade career of helping others draws to a close for Orange’s Deborah Longmore.

After a 41-year career in pub­lic pathol­o­gy, Deb­o­rah Long­more closed the door of NSW Health Pathology’s Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice based at Orange Health Ser­vice, for the last time recently.

Born and raised in Orange, Deb­o­rah says her job came with a bit of luck when at the end of her stud­ies she dropped into Orange Hos­pi­tal to enquire if they had any work and was asked to start Mon­day. And the rest, as they say, is history.

“Pathol­o­gy has giv­en me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­bine what I love – sci­ence and peo­ple. It has also enabled me to grow, net­work, learn and be part of projects improv­ing the ser­vice of pub­lic pathol­o­gy across New South Wales,” Deb­o­rah said.

“There is always some­thing inter­est­ing going on, and I would­n’t change it for the world. Being able to make a dif­fer­ence to patients is what I’ve loved about my career.”

For the past 33 years Deb­o­rah has man­aged the Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice, which plays a crit­i­cal role ensur­ing blood prod­ucts are avail­able to patients, many in life threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions where every sec­ond counts.

While she is hum­ble about her career achieve­ments, Deb­o­rah can be cred­it­ed for the intro­duc­tion of the trau­ma esky on the Orange and West­ern NSW heli­copter ser­vices in the ear­ly 2000s. A life chang­ing ini­tia­tive, the trau­ma esky car­ries three units of O neg­a­tive blood, which is a blood prod­uct that can be used irre­spec­tive of blood type and enables trans­fu­sion on the spot rather than at the hos­pi­tal. Deb­o­rah saw the esky being used in a tri­al which was hap­pen­ing at West­mead Hospital.

Deb­o­rah says she also got lot of sat­is­fac­tion talk­ing at donor col­lec­tion ser­vice nights and answer­ing ques­tions and shar­ing her knowl­edge at con­fer­ences, pre-COVID.

“I was sec­ond in charge of bio­chem­istry when I was asked to look after the blood bank for what I thought was a week or two. While I knew a bit about blood, I have edu­cat­ed myself a lot, and net­work­ing and talk­ing to oth­ers in Aus­tralia and inter­na­tion­al­ly has been a tremen­dous expe­ri­ence,” she says. “In my career, I’ve seen pub­lic pathol­o­gy go from strength to strength and the gov­er­nance and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of process­es has been a sig­nif­i­cant part of the change,” she says.

On her retire­ment, Deb­o­rah says she plans to ease into it.

“I’m look­ing for­ward to being able to go to the gym unin­ter­rupt­ed, do a bit of gar­den­ing and spend time with my grand­sons. And then who knows, we might trav­el,” she says.

Rapidly building a pipeline of critical talent to fill roles via statewide bulk recruitment campaigns as a new and innovative way to approach recruitment.

The impor­tance of explor­ing inno­v­a­tive ways to seek and attract the right peo­ple for the right roles has nev­er been more impor­tant than now.

We are only ever as good as our peo­ple and are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing our pro­fes­sion­al growth, devel­op­ment and capa­bil­i­ties to deliv­er the spe­cial­ist ser­vices our com­mu­ni­ties and part­ners rely on us for.

As a result of the work­force impacts of COVID-19, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy estab­lished a Recruit­ment and Capac­i­ty Build­ing Work­ing Par­ty to explore options and strate­gies for how best we devel­op and sup­port peo­ple and cul­ture, in line with our strate­gic priorities.

One of the strate­gies iden­ti­fied by this work­ing par­ty was to rapid­ly build a pipeline of crit­i­cal tal­ent to fill roles via statewide bulk recruit­ment cam­paigns as a new and inno­v­a­tive way to approach recruitment.

As a long-term strat­e­gy, bulk recruit­ment cam­paigns are not designed to replace our cur­rent way of recruit­ing, rather com­ple­ment our cur­rent process­es and sup­port local recruit­ment actions when there is a need. It offers us a stream­lined way of recruit­ing mul­ti­ple peo­ple to mul­ti­ple roles at dif­fer­ent loca­tions while also cre­at­ing a greater oppor­tu­ni­ty to rapid­ly build our eli­gi­bil­i­ty lists for future recruit­ment needs and sup­port the increased num­ber of COVID-19 relat­ed roles.

This addi­tion­al approach to the way we attract and recruit tal­ent is anoth­er exam­ple of how we, as one statewide team, dis­play our pio­neer­ing spir­it – for all of us. NSW Health Pathol­o­gy are lead­ing the way with this ini­tia­tive and are excit­ed to col­lab­o­rate and share our learn­ings and results with our NSW Health colleagues.