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Building from within

Building from within

The recruitment, retention and development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff is a key opportunity that will help us close social, economic and health gaps.

The recruit­ment, reten­tion and devel­op­ment of Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander staff is a key oppor­tu­ni­ty iden­ti­fied in our Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Action Plan that will help us close social, eco­nom­ic and health gaps.

In recent years, increased sup­port and resourc­ing has seen the pro­por­tion of Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander staff employed by NSW Health Pathol­o­gy grow from 0.40% in July 2017 to 1.46% in August 2022.

This puts us on track to meet our tar­get of 3% of over­all workforce.

But We’re not stop­ping there.

“Cre­at­ing a nation, strength­ened by respect­ful rela­tion­ships between the wider Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty and Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples is some­thing that NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is pas­sion­ate about,” our Abo­rig­i­nal Employ­ment Coor­di­na­tor Col­in Gib­son said.

“As an organ­i­sa­tion, we believe this starts from within.”

NSW Health Pathology’s Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander Recruit­ment and Reten­tion Pro­gram sup­ports our organ­i­sa­tion to grow and devel­op our Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander workforce.

“Our focus is to put Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ples at the cen­tre and build a strong work­force ground­ed in our shared his­to­ry,” Col­in said.

“We want to pro­vide a cul­tur­al­ly safe and respect­ful work­place and posi­tion our­selves as an employ­er of choice for Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peoples.

We’re active­ly work­ing towards being an organ­i­sa­tion that has respect­ful, respon­sive and cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive ser­vices for our community.”

The program’s suc­cess­es includ­ed host­ing our inau­gur­al Abo­rig­i­nal Work­force Forum, pilot­ing an Abo­rig­i­nal trainee­ship pro­gram at West­mead, and increas­ing pro­mo­tion of tar­get­ed job vacan­cies through exter­nal Abo­rig­i­nal employ­ment networks.

It has also ensured that our Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander staff are includ­ed in lead­er­ship devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties.  We’re proud that three of our Abo­rig­i­nal staff were select­ed and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed our inten­sive Emerg­ing Lead­ers program.

Pioneering our approach to recruitment – for all of us

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.

Tech experts on show

Our DevOps and Point of Care Testing tech experts were on show at the Newcastle Tech Futures expo.

We have the jobs of the future right now at NSW Health Pathology.

Madel­lyn Herd and Tim Eck­er­s­ley from our award-win­ning Point of Care Test­ing and DevOps teams spread the word among stu­dents seek­ing tech oppor­tu­ni­ties at the recent New­cas­tle Tech Futures expo at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Newcastle.

“It was real­ly great to be able to rep­re­sent NSW Health Pathol­o­gy to the stu­dents and hope­ful­ly we have inspired some to look our way post-grad­u­a­tion,” Madel­lyn said.

Our teams are work­ing at the cut­ting-edge, devel­op­ing solu­tions to com­plex chal­lenges to change the way we deliv­er health ser­vices for our com­mu­ni­ties. The DevOps team is help­ing deliv­er tech solu­tions in dig­i­tal health­care tech­nol­o­gy, genomics, vir­tu­al health­care, health infor­mat­ics and ana­lyt­ics and more.

Want to work for us?

Check out our vacan­cies at https://jobs.health.nsw.gov.au/nswhp/

Unlocking the pandemic puzzle to help save lives

Our genomics team has used cutting edge technology and expertise to help keep us safe through COVID-19.

NSW Health Pathology’s Insti­tute of Clin­i­cal Pathol­o­gy and Med­ical Research (ICPMR) genomics team has worked tire­less­ly through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team uses cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy and exper­tise to deliv­er sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs that have pro­vid­ed the cor­ner­stone of dis­ease detec­tion and man­age­ment to keep us safe.

Their efforts through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic have saved thou­sands of lives, pre­vent­ed fur­ther out­breaks and recent­ly saw the ICPMR team recog­nised with the NSW Health Secretary’s Award for Inte­grat­ed Val­ue Based Care.

NSW Health Pathology’s ICPMR team at West­mead Hos­pi­tal con­ducts world-class pub­lic health and research, work­ing close­ly with col­leagues at the West­mead Insti­tute of Med­ical Research, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney and the West­ern Syd­ney Local Health District.

Togeth­er, their com­bined research made it pos­si­ble to allow trac­ing of COVID-19 trans­mis­sion, fast iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of vari­ants of con­cern and time­ly detec­tion of drug resis­tance in new vari­ants as they emerged dur­ing the peak of the pandemic.

At its core, this work was about col­lab­o­ra­tion, tak­ing inno­v­a­tive lab­o­ra­to­ry work and pulling togeth­er dif­fer­ent pieces of health data to dis­cov­er new ways to con­trol the world-chang­ing pan­dem­ic as it happened.

ICPMR’s genom­ic epi­demi­ol­o­gist, Dr Ali­cia Arnott, said “We’ve pulled togeth­er as a team and under­tak­en some­thing that had­n’t been done in NSW before to inform pan­dem­ic con­trol and responses”.

NSW Health Pathology’s Direc­tor of Pub­lic Health Pathol­o­gy and ICPMR, Pro­fes­sor Dominic Dwyer, said “this has been the biggest emer­gency in infec­tious dis­eases for the last 100 years. We’re talk­ing about mil­lions and mil­lions of infec­tions around the world. This work has been crit­i­cal­ly important”.

Pro­fes­sor Dwyer describes the award-win­ning ICPMR genomics team as “the unsung heroes”.

“There are a lot of peo­ple doing a lot of work and a lot of hours to ben­e­fit the health of peo­ple in NSW and keep our com­mu­ni­ty safe.”

Head and neck cancer and the role of the pathologist

The treatment of head and neck cancers can have devastating effects on the way a person eats, speaks, swallows or the way they see and hear. So, what causes them and what role does the pathologist have in the treatment process?

The news that one of Australia’s most beloved per­form­ers, John Farn­ham, had under­gone surgery in August 2022 to remove a can­cer­ous tumour in his mouth brought head and neck can­cers into the pub­lic spot­light like nev­er before.

Pro­fes­sor Ruta Gup­ta sat down with RCPA Pres­i­dent Dr Lawrie Bott to dis­cuss the role of the pathol­o­gist in head and neck can­cers for an episode of the College’s pod­cast series, “The Pathol­o­gists Cut”.

Prof Gup­ta holds many posi­tions, includ­ing as senior staff spe­cial­ist at NSW Health Pathology’s Roy­al Prince Alfred Hos­pi­tal Lab­o­ra­to­ry, and as lead pathol­o­gist with the Head and Neck Oncol­o­gy and Thy­roid Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team at Chris O’Brien Life­house Can­cer Centre.

“Because of the area of the body that head and neck can­cers affect, they can have very sig­nif­i­cant effects on the way a per­son eats or speaks, the way they swal­low or the way they see and hear. Head and neck can­cers are a very diverse range of can­cers caused by a vari­ety of rea­sons and risk fac­tors, which are all grouped togeth­er because of their loca­tion on the body,” she said.

“Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the most fre­quent cause of head and neck can­cer is smok­ing and drink­ing alco­hol. How­ev­er, in Aus­tralia, the rate of smok­ing is going down which means that we are see­ing a decline in smok­ing asso­ci­at­ed head and neck cancers.

“Cur­rent­ly, we are see­ing an increase in head and neck can­cers caused by virus­es such as human papil­lo­mavirus (HPV), which caus­es can­cer of the orophar­ynx, or Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), which caus­es nasopha­ryn­geal cancer.

“Head and neck can­cers asso­ci­at­ed with smok­ing or alco­hol are gen­er­al­ly seen in old­er peo­ple and are much more com­mon in men who have had a life­time habit with alco­hol or smoking.

“On the oth­er hand, head and neck can­cers caused by virus­es tend to occur in much younger people.

“These patients tend to be in their ear­ly 40s to mid 50s and gen­er­al­ly do not have life­time expo­sure to tobac­co. More recent­ly, we are also see­ing mouth can­cers in young women, the rea­sons for which we don’t know cur­rent­ly,” said Prof Gupta.

HPV is a com­mon virus that affects both males and females and there are more than 100 strains of HPV.

Most types of HPV are harm­less, do not cause any symp­toms, and go away on their own.

A small pro­por­tion of peo­ple, both men and women, will not clear HPV from their sys­tems – these peo­ple are at high­er risk of devel­op­ing can­cers, either of the head and neck, or in the case of women, can­cer of the cervix.

“Because head and neck can­cers that arise from HPV are gen­er­al­ly hid­den in the fold of the ton­sils or right at the back of the throat, they can be very dif­fi­cult to see. Sur­geons will use an endo­scope to look and take biop­sies from the ton­sils or the back of the tongue. These biop­sies are then sent to the pathol­o­gist who will look under the micro­scope and make a can­cer diag­no­sis. If can­cer is present, there are cer­tain tests we can do to see if it is relat­ed to HPV,” said Prof Gupta.

“Once a diag­no­sis of can­cer is made, the patient then under­goes surgery. For head and neck can­cer this is not just the removal of tis­sue with can­cer. It is not just tak­ing out the tongue, the jaw, or the ton­sils, we also need to take out lymph glands from the patient’s neck.

“These are big sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures and can require ICU care and long hos­pi­tal admis­sions whilst the patient recov­ers. The diag­no­sis of head and neck can­cer is a crit­i­cal step to start the patient’s can­cer journey.

“The pathol­o­gists exam­ine the tis­sues removed dur­ing surgery to deter­mine whether all of the can­cer was removed or whether micro­scop­ic amounts is left behind or whether the can­cer has invad­ed blood ves­sels and nerves. If this has hap­pened addi­tion­al treat­ment with radio­ther­a­py or chemother­a­py may be need­ed. Thus, it is the pathol­o­gist that informs every step of a patient’s can­cer man­age­ment,” said Prof Gupta.

You can lis­ten to Prof Gupta’s pod­cast episode here: https://www.rcpa.edu.au/Library/Publications/The-Pathologists-Cut-Podcast

Genetic detectives on the case

NSW Health Pathology is a national leader in genome sequencing and its expertise came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within two weeks our Westmead laboratory had developed an in-house whole genome sequencing process for the COVID-19 virus.

When the coro­n­avirus SARS-CoV­‑2 first land­ed on Aus­tralian shores in Jan­u­ary 2020, it car­ried with it a genet­ic passport.

Each case of the virus had its own pass­port with a genet­ic stamp show­ing how the nucleotides inside it were ordered.

As with many virus­es, as SARS-CoV­‑2 spread it evolved and mutat­ed, chang­ing the type and order­ing of these nucleotides ever so slightly.

This may sound sin­is­ter, but it is in fact a very use­ful development.

Under­stand­ing how the virus was spread­ing was going to be key to its con­tain­ment. Pro­fes­sor Vitali Sintchenko, lead pathol­o­gist for the Micro­bial Genomics Lab­o­ra­to­ry at NSW Health Pathology’s ICPMR-West­mead, describes nucleotides with­in an RNA genome as the build­ing blocks of a virus.

“In order to under­stand trans­mis­sion path­ways of the pathogen, you must first under­stand the order of these build­ing blocks. You can then iden­ti­fy any pres­ence or absence of changes in the build­ing blocks,” Prof Sintchenko said.

“With whole genome sequenc­ing we cap­ture the sequence of these build­ing blocks very accu­rate­ly and we employ com­plex instru­ments to do it quick­ly and in high volumes.

“Rapid sequenc­ing tech­niques allow us to gain a whole genome wide view of the pathogen very quick­ly and pre­dict or under­stand behav­iours of the virus.

“When we look at nucleotides, we can iden­ti­fy with high accu­ra­cy any vari­ance with­in the virus genet­ic sequence.

“We com­pare virus­es from patients at dif­fer­ent stages of the dis­ease or with a dif­fer­ent his­to­ry of dis­ease and look for poten­tial rela­tion­ships between cases.

“From this we can infer, from genom­ic data, poten­tial trans­mis­sion pat­terns or path­ways that can help track how it has spread through a com­mu­ni­ty and beyond,” Prof Sintchenko said.

Through whole genome sequenc­ing, experts can match new cas­es to clus­ters, or iden­ti­fy the ori­gin of, and rela­tion­ships between COVID-19 cas­es, pro­vid­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of the spread of the disease.

Whole genome sequenc­ing offers anoth­er line of evi­dence to sup­port con­tact trac­ing by fill­ing in gaps where peo­ple have not or can­not pro­vide all nec­es­sary details to help trace the source.

With­in two weeks NSW Heath Pathology’s West­mead lab­o­ra­to­ry had devel­oped an in-house whole genome sequenc­ing process for the COVID-19 virus, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with aca­d­e­mics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney, soon fol­lowed by NSW Health Pathology’s lab­o­ra­to­ries at Randwick.

In eight months, the team at West­mead suc­cess­ful­ly sequenced more than 1,000 cas­es and dis­cov­ered 51 genom­ic clusters.

Sequences are also uploaded to an inter­na­tion­al virus sequence data­base to assist epi­demi­ol­o­gists and researchers around the world.

Prof Sintchenko says the appli­ca­tion of whole genome sequenc­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion of COVID-19 has been trans­for­ma­tion­al and the num­ber of genomes uploaded to the inter­na­tion­al data­base has been unprecedented.

“NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is a nation­al leader in genome sequenc­ing, and we have made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to data shar­ing to inter­na­tion­al research teams,” Prof Sintchenko said.

“We have very well-devel­oped trans­la­tion­al research col­lab­o­ra­tion between clin­i­cians, sci­en­tists and researchers that has enabled us to achieve what we have in a very short timeframe.”

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy con­tin­ues to work close­ly with Health Pro­tec­tion NSW, pro­vid­ing whole genome sequenc­ing data and report­ing to sup­port their cen­tralised con­tact trac­ing and epi­demi­ol­o­gy teams.

This work is crit­i­cal to iden­ti­fy peo­ple at risk of COVID-19 and min­imise fur­ther spread of the virus in the com­mu­ni­ty and among the most vulnerable.

“The evo­lu­tion and spread of the virus around the globe and in Aus­tralia is fas­ci­nat­ing but com­plex,” Prof Sintchenko said.

“It is like detec­tive work, and we are part of the NSW Health COVID-19 response team.”

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