On a recent visit to a NSW Health Pathology lab we were told about a technician with an interesting personal story and a passion for accuracy. We asked him to share a little of his story with us.

Zahir Yassin was born in Afghanistan in 1955. He came to Australia as a refugee in the 1980s with his family. This was a period when Afghanistan was in turmoil due to invasion and prolonged intervention by Soviet troops in the early 80s. There was conflict between Soviet forces and the mujahideen (local militias) that fought the Soviets using arms supplied by foreign governments including the UK and USA.

Zahir says: “There were many reasons I came to Australia; first of all mine and my family’s safety was my priority.

We just wanted to leave our war-torn country, we have seen enough killing, fighting and suffering there. I was lucky because I have a friend in Australia who was kind enough to sponsor us to come here as refugees.

We arrived in Australia on 27th July 1987 and we are glad that we came here because it is a beautiful, peaceful and loving country.”

Zahir now works as a Technical Officer in one of NSW Health Pathology’s labs which covers biochemistry, haematology, blood bank and CSR (Collection Specimen Reception – where samples are received and sorted).

He says he chose to work in pathology because he sees it as a “professional and rewarding career” and the best thing about the job for him is knowing he is part of an expert team providing on time and accurate pathology results for doctors and other medical professionals.

He said;

“My proudest moments working in pathology are being able to provide quick and accurate results for patients with life threatening conditions.”

His advice to others who may be on the path to a pathology career is; “Working in pathology is a highly professional job and my advice is to pay attention to the details of pathology testing; check and check again before verifying the results.”

Outside of work Zahir enjoys cooking and gardening and has some wise words to live by; “Life is always a challenge. Appreciate what you have, aim for the best and work hard. I have suffered a lot through my hard journey but I never give up.”

The post A safe haven for Zahir; the personal story of a pathology professional first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

70% of medical decisions rely on pathology. The service plays an invaluable role in the detection, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Whether it’s a routine health screen, cancer diagnosis, or blood donation— patients depend on pathology in every country across the globe.

Australia boasts 1,800 pathologists and 35,000 people working in pathology, including roles that range from medical scientists to lab technicians and collectors. These are the people responsible for processing 500 million samples each year.

With the highest global quality standards, rapid turnaround times and highly trained workers, Australian pathology is literally world class and should be recognised as such.

On International Pathology Day, events are being held around the world to explore the potential of pathology in addressing global health issues.

London will play host to ‘Pathology and Cancer’, a live webinar roundtable discussion on the critical role of pathology in meeting the commitments of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Cancer Resolution.

Organised by the British Royal College of Pathologists, this important roundtable will bring together an internationally-renowned panel of speakers to explore ways to ensure international cancer control plans adequately address the provision of effective and affordable pathology services.

In Malaysia, students and aspiring pathologists from University of Malaysia Sarawak, will host a celebration at the Museum of Anatomy and Pathology. The interactive event will feature scientifically themed games and food to teach students about the value of pathology.

Back in Australia, Tasmanian pathologists will be hosting a breakfast in Hobart to highlight the importance of bowel cancer screening as part of the #justpooit campaign. Attendees will include Parliamentary MPs, the Hobart Lord Mayor and the CEO of Cancer Council Tasmania. The event will bring together bowel cancer survivors and experts to discuss the effectiveness of bowel screening in preventing deaths through early detection.

Throughout the day, Tasmanians can learn about pathology at various pop-up stalls around the island. Information stalls will be located outside the Royal Hobart Hospital, Launceston General Hospital, North West Regional Hospital, Mersey Community Hospital, Launceston Pathology and Hobart Pathology.

In celebration of International Pathology Day, The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) will be running a competition for anyone hosting their own event. The competition is open to all hospitals, collection centres, laboratories, medical schools/universities who have signed up to receive RCPA’s free promotional packs. To enter, you can post information and photos of your events directly to RCPA or to RCPA’s Facebook page.

No matter where you live, without pathology workers, there is no medicine. Today, we’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to the hidden heroes of healthcare.

The post Happy International Pathology Day! first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

Tasks were performed manually with great skill and precision. The work was labour intensive, time-consuming and, sometimes quite challenging. Back then mouth pipetting was the norm for pathology tests. Here liquids were transferred from one test tube to another using a straw-like tool. Platelets and white blood cells were counted manually in a chamber and all reports were hand-written.

“I feel very fortunate to have learnt everything manually. It has taught me solid skills that I still apply to my work today. When I look back on the past, it seems amazing where we’ve come from and where we’re heading”, says Julie.

With a wave of technology and innovation during her long career, Julie has witnessed a dramatic evolution in pathology. The introduction of computers, diagnostic machines and 24-hour service has led to faster diagnostic tests and more efficient patient care.

One thing that has remained constant throughout the years is Julie’s dedication to providing the best possible service to local communities. When Cyclone Debbie wreaked havoc on the Sunshine Coast, Julie stayed in the lab for 18-hours straight to ensure that patients received their results on time.

In her role as a medical scientist and lab manager, Julie not only helps patients but also trains other scientists.  As a world champion in softball, her passion for teamwork has enabled her to mentor and inspire hundreds of pathology workers.

Managing a team of 32 staff and servicing six hospitals means there’s rarely a dull day in the lab. “We service oncology departments, maternity units and emergency rooms with diverse and complex needs. Whether it’s a baby affected by sepsis or an elderly patient in need of urgent blood products, we need to work fast to save lives.”

Despite her level of seniority, Julie still likes to work on the bench alongside her colleagues. “Because I’m mentoring staff, I like to lead by example and take a hands-on approach. As pathology develops, I want to keep my skills up to date. Even after 40 years, it’s good to be kept on your toes!”

The post Julie’s 40-year commitment to pathology first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

The Frankston laboratory conducts life-saving tests for residents of a wide area covering Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula. The laboratory analyses specimens from approximately a thousand patients a day, and services the hospital’s in-patients and out-patients.

Minister Hunt and Mr Crewther took a guided tour of the laboratory highlighting vital pathology services including cancer diagnosis, monitoring of medication levels for stroke patients and cross-matching donated blood units from the Australian Red Cross Blood Service for local cancer patients.

During their tour, the politicians visited the biochemistry department. Here they learned about troponin testing and its importance for diagnosing heart attacks quickly in the hospital’s emergency department.

In the anatomical pathology department both parliamentarians were invited to look down a microscope to see examples of breast and bowel cancer.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said:

“The Coalition Government has a rock solid commitment to Medicare and pathology services will continue to be an essential part of that commitment.

Pathology is critical in determining the cause and nature of disease and plays an important role in the majority of preventative health programs.

The Government recognises the valuable contribution of the pathology sector and we are keen to work together to ensure that Australians continue receiving high-quality care as efficiently as possible.”

The post Health Minister visits the engine room of healthcare first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

This predated laboratory automation and computerisation, and was a period when analyses were performed manually and all reports were hand-written. John also had daily visits from GPs who called into the laboratory during their hospital rounds to pick up pathology reports and discuss results with laboratory staff.

The Cowra lab was praised for its efficiency by Dr Harry Kramer, the Director of the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research in the 1970s.

“When I first started training in the 1960s there were no disposable plastic syringes, only glass ones that had to be washed out between patients. We also had to sharpen the needles after several uses before sterilising.

Collecting blood using a glass syringe wasn’t without its hazards as there was no auto-stop device preventing the plunger being pulled completely out of the barrel. On rare occasions, blood was spilled onto the patient’s bed making us very unpopular with the nursing staff!

We had to collect a plasma control whenever we were doing prothrombin index tests, now known as INRs. Commercial plasma controls weren’t available to us then, so we would collect additional blood from a patient who was not on anticoagulants or one of the pathology staff would volunteer.

One day we had no fresh plasma control and so I bravely volunteered, and somewhat foolishly allowed a junior medical resident to collect my blood. This proved disastrous!”

Unfortunately, the resident was not well-practised at taking blood and drew air into the syringe – John saw many bubbles inside the barrel. The resident then let go of the syringe plunger so that this air seemed to disappear into John’s arm. Air bubbles entering a vein can cause an air embolism, that can be fatal.

“The last thing I remembered was thinking ‘air embolism’ until I came to on the floor in a pool of blood, having hit my head on the central-heating unit as I collapsed. Fortunately, it was the result of a syncopal episode (dizziness), not an embolism. My head was sewn up in casualty and I resumed my day’s work!”

John remembers many changes such as when ready-made agar plates became commercially available for microbiology. Before that lab staff had to weigh out and sterilise powdered culture media to pour into plates, and horse blood was added when making blood-agar.

Under his stewardship, the Cowra lab grew from a single-person operation, where John was on call 24/7, to a team of 8 staff members.

One diagnosis that stands out happened during the first few weeks of John’s time at Cowra. A male patient was very ill with symptoms of meningitis and doctors were struggling to find the cause.

“An out of town referral lab had failed to detect any microorganisms in the spinal fluids submitted. The patient was getting worse, he had left hospital twice only to be readmitted.

I was sent his spinal fluid for analysis a couple of weeks after setting up the new laboratory, and using an Indian ink preparation I detected a comparatively rare form of meningitis caused by the fungus (yeast) Cryptococcus neoformans. The Indian ink preparation is a negative staining technique that microscopically reveals the large transparent capsule surrounding the yeast cell.

Torulosis, the disease caused by C.neoformans, generally starts off with a lung infection and may spread to the central nervous system. In those days it often proved fatal.

In my 35 years in pathology in was the only case of Torulosis I or the local GPs came across.”

John’s diagnosis meant the man could be appropriately treated, most likely saving his life.

The post “My head was sewn up & I resumed my work!” How labs have changed since the ’70s first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

Photo credit: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/05/obama-better-babysitter-car-mechanic-material.html#

President Barack Obama is launching a version of “take your child to work day” that’s focused on America’s science laboratories instead of its corporate workspaces.

It’s part of Obama’s effort to encourage young people, especially girls and minorities, to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

More than 50 national labs in 20 states are opening their doors this coming week to approximately 5,000 elementary, middle and high school students to help spark interest by exposing them to the scientists, engineers and lab employees who carry out important work and research at facilities in their communities.

The students, including from communities aligned with Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, will participate in mentoring sessions, hands-on experiments and other activities. My Brother’s Keeper is a public-private initiative started by Obama to help boys and young men of color stay on the right path. The White House Council on Women and Girls is also involved.

“National Week at the Labs” coincides with February’s end of Black History Month and the start of Women’s History Month in March.

“It’s an exciting time to think about how we’re pulling all the children of our country into technology and STEM and the jobs of the future,” Megan Smith, chief technology officer in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

She said some 600,000 U.S. technology jobs, which pay significantly higher than the average salary, are currently unfilled.

At the White House on Monday, elementary school students from Baltimore and the District of Columbia are expected to participate in a science fair-type event.

Obama says it’s good for the country when young people are excited about science.

“Whether it’s setting foot on the moon, developing a vaccine for polio, inventing the Internet or building the world’s strongest military, we’ve relied on innovative scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians to help us tackle the toughest challenges of our time,” he recently told Popular Science magazine. “Being pro-science is the only way we make sure that America continues to lead the world.”

Obama started the annual White House Science Fair because he said budding scientists should be celebrated as much as Super Bowl football teams. The administration is also more than halfway toward his goal of training 100,000 new math and science teachers by 2021, he said.

“We want the next game-changing industry or life-saving breakthrough to happen right here in the United States,” he said.

The post Obama launches ‘Take Your Child to the Lab’ Week first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

It has the mysterious name MALDI-TOF and to add to its futuristic feel it uses a laser inside a vacuum tube to perform tests on samples prepared with something known as “the matrix”.

(MALDI-TOF stands for Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption & Ionisation- Time Of Flight.)

In order to operate this intriguing instrument, a scientist prepares a sample on a testing plate, firstly using Formic acid to assist in breaking down cell walls and exposing the proteins.

A liquid called the matrix is then applied and the proteins crystallize as it dries.

This plate of crystalline protein structures is then placed in a ‘well’ inside the large vacuum tube in the machine. A laser at the top of the tube is shot at the sample and measures the ‘peaks’ of the crystals.
This matches them with a database of organisms to determine what the bug in question is and how best to treat it.

So why is this important?

Before going in the machine, the scientist must use the sample to grow the organism.

Prior to the MALDI-TOF, scientists had to grow an organism for between 18 and 24 hours and sometimes up to 40 hours.

Once the organism had grown tests could then be set up but some of these could also take up to 18 hours, meaning the whole process could take days.

Now the MALDI-TOF can use growth 4 hours old to give a result, which only takes 30 seconds inside the machine.

In the case of life-threatening infections like septicaemia, this could save lives.

David Lorenz is a hospital scientist working in microbiology at the St Vincents Hospital pathology laboratory in Sydney.

“If something went wrong with the barrage of biochemical tests set up for the identification of an organism, you wouldn’t necessarily know of the problem until 24 hours later and then you’d have to start again. Although mistakes are rare, with the MALDI-TOF you can know within a minute if there is a problem with the sample and then you can run the test again.”

David says that not only has the MALDI-TOF improved lab turnaround times, which is clearly a benefit to patients and those treating them, it has improved workloads in labs too.

The machine can run up to 96 tests simultaneously every hour and is very accurate.

However, there are still some organisms that the MALDI-TOF cannot tell apart and results need to be interpreted by a skilled medical scientist. If the machine produces a result which is unclear or unusual a scientist can then choose to rerun tests or use alternative methods to identify bacteria.

MALDI-TOF can be used to identify all bacterial illnesses, including bacterial meningitis, E.coli and gonorrhoea. It can also be used on yeast and some fungi.

The post Mouldy what? This funny-sounding instrument has cut some pathology turnaround times from days to minutes first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

Last week he returned to the pathology laboratory that monitored his health during his journey to the brink of poor health from hidden sugars. Adam Bandt, Federal Member for Melbourne, joined Damon on the tour.

So how do you celebrate winning an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award in the same week as receiving word that your film is the highest grossing Australian documentary of all time? Well, go for a blood test, of course.

Damon was reunited with his regular collector, Sharon, to have his blood drawn in order to discover if his health has returned to normal since he went back to a low sugar diet. Over the course of the next hour, Damon and Adam witnessed the journey from vein to result, and the vast array of laboratory investigation that happens in between.

Pathology Awareness Australia Ambassador Dr Ian Clark led the tour showcasing departments including microbiology, cytogenetics and haematology.

The lab is one of the busiest in Victoria and is responsible for producing 16,000 test results a day. Adam and Damon watched state-of-the-art technology and met the highly skilled people working 24/7 behind the scenes to produce life-changing results. They even examined slides comparing a healthy liver to a ‘fatty liver’ so they could see the effect Damon’s experiment had on his body – Damon developed a fatty liver after just 18 days of eating a high sugar diet.

Adam Bandt was clearly impressed:

“I am proud that Melbourne is home to world-leading medical facilities. It is a privilege to meet the people involved and see their work first-hand.”

Damon breathed a sigh of relief when he received his blood test results at the end of the tour – less than an hour after blood collection. Thanks to the help of the lab he went home knowing his health was better than ever.

The post Adam Bandt MP and award-winning actor witness pathology up close first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.

Karen is a mother of three who was diagnosed with skin cancer after finding a mole on her back in January 2012. In February 2013 she found a lump under her arm; her doctor ordered an ultrasound and a needle biopsy to investigate and stage IV melanoma was confirmed.

After diagnosis, Karen’s prognosis was poor; at the time, treatment options were limited and she was told to ‘get things in order’.

Karen said, “I wasn’t prepared to take that; I have a six year old, a twelve year old and a fourteen year old to think about.”

Determined not to give up and to do everything she could to tackle the cancer, Karen did some research and discovered that clinical trials of some new immunotherapy drugs were taking place at only two sites in Australia, Melbourne and Perth.

Fortunately, Karen was accepted into the Melbourne drug trial, she now flies in every fortnight from Adelaide to receive treatment.

Pathology is an important part of the clinical trial process and Karen has blood tests every fortnight to monitor how she is responding to treatment and any side effects of the drugs.

Karen is now involved in several trials that rely on her original tissue sample and blood tests to identify why treatment is working for her but may not be effective in other patients.

Karen said, “The team at the hospital are magnificent.” Her health quickly improved after treatment began in October 2013, “Within one month I had a turnaround, tumours throughout my body were healing,” she said.

Pathology’s role is crucial in continuing to monitor Karen’s progress and how the drugs may be affecting her body.

Karen said, “I’ve had lung inflammation as a side effect. I’ve been given a puffer to help with that and I know another woman on the trial who had a liver problem that was picked up by blood tests. The drugs can have various side effects on different organs so pathology testing is really important.”

Pathology’s role in fighting cancer also goes beyond monitoring.

“I’ve given my consent for the team to slice up the tumours I’ve had removed for research and to put in the cancer bank,” said Karen.

The tumours Karen had removed will be stored by the Victorian Cancer Biobank alongside thousands of other specimens which help researchers to better understand cancer and improve diagnosis and treatment.

Karen receives incredible support from family and friends, and says it would be very hard to do this without them. She is also a facilitator for Melanoma Patients Australia who run support groups and provide information to people with melanoma, their families and friends.

The post Pathology helps Karen fight cancer first appeared on Know Pathology Know Healthcare.