General News
4 November, 2024
No more needles for Libby Brennan
Fifty years in more or less the one job, with just maternity leave in there somewhere must be some sort of record.
Fifty years in more or less the one job, with just maternity leave in there somewhere must be some sort of record.
And now Libby Brennan of Horsham, who turns 70 in December, will leave behind her job as a phlebotomist with Dorevitch Pathology at Horsham Doctors, and will now spend more time in the caravan and also see more of the grandkids who live at Ballarat and Torquay.
Even though the term might be unknown, many will be quite familiar with the task of a phlebotomist - to draw blood from a patient, which is then tested in a medical laboratory and the results conveyed to a medical practitioner.
When Libby Sudholz, who lived on a farm at Goroke, completed schooling at Edenhope High School her future was unknown.
Initially she took a job as a chemistry laboratory assistant at Longerenong College, but quit after 18 months after being made aware there was a job going at Wimmera Base Hospital in the pathology department.
After a break from having children she received a phone call that the girl who did histology - the study of tissues and cells under a microscope - was leaving and would she like to try for the role.
It meant working closely with a pathologist and many exacting processes to achieve results, which are now available in minutes.
"On the first day I saw human bones laid out on a table," she said, "That wouldn't happen now."
She later returned to being a phlebotomist. At one time while working at Tristar, she was both receptionist and relief phlebotomist as required.
One patient asked her one time: "Aren't you the receptionist?" She assured her she was both.
Much has changed over the years, when 'early on processes' were slow and arduous and blood tests rare.
Ms Brennan said in her early days she might take four tests each day. Now she could do four in 20 minutes.