Big decisions and rediscovering purpose in medical laboratory science

For SelectScience’s CLINICAL24 campaign, specialist medical laboratory scientist Terry Taylor reflects on a defining career decision, the value of supportive laboratory systems, and the renewed sense of purpose he has found in Australia. His experience offers an encouraging reminder that prioritizing wellbeing can be a powerful step toward professional fulfillment and future leadership.

Recognizing the need for change

Sometimes we just need to make the big decisions.

As a prominent professional and community leader in my home country, there are defining moments that hit us with a force that not even the strongest person can deal with. For me, as 2026 started, it finally dawned on me that I needed to change my career path and walk away from what was a battle I was never going to win in my working life in NZ.

I had lobbied, advocated, and promoted our medical laboratory profession for over 20 years across all levels of health and political leadership and across all mainstream media within NZ. I had developed some defining relationships from patients to government Ministers and everything in between. Yes, there had been a few small victories, but the reality was our medical laboratory profession was in a significantly worse position than it was when I started in professional leadership back in the mid-2000s.

I had spent literally thousands of hours and compiled thousands of pages of documents and correspondence in the drive to get our NZ publicly funded pathology services to a better place and operating under a sustainable and functional national model of delivery that put patient outcomes and workforce stability ahead of non-health determinants.

Unfortunately, the personal and workplace toll that comes with having an outlook and vision that contradicts your employer’s push for a different ideology eventually wears one out. Adding that to political and health leadership inertia, with a reluctance to change the status quo and a tendency to believe the wrong people, compounds the feeling of helplessness that gives us all that compounding sinking feeling.

I was in the fortunate position of being a specialist medical laboratory scientist in a discipline akin to finding hen’s teeth across NZ and Australia. That meant I had options and so I began actively looking for a change from what was now clear to me: a dead end created by staying in a workplace and national environment that was never going to change in my time.

Taking a new opportunity

I applied for and was offered a position working as a clinical flow cytometry scientist for Pathology Queensland based at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. I talked it over with my family and friends and they all wholeheartedly agreed I should go and get back that zest for my professional scientist role and step back from the binding leadership and governance positions I had in NZ. After all, my mental state was now very much in the ‘defeatist mode’ and everything was becoming a chore.

My dealings with my employer were increasingly difficult and there was no end in sight of the immense staffing and service challenges in my home hospital environment. It was time to make the move.

A welcoming new professional home

I finished up my 33 years in Dunedin in somewhat of a cloud due to some bizarre behavior by the management of the company I was employed by, but I was now fully focused on my move to a new country, new home life and most importantly a new workplace. Any trepidation I had was quickly dispelled by being made welcome across all aspects of my new life in Brisbane.

I was in awe of the status and beauty of Princess Alexandra Hospital, its modern open and light décor, the flow and feel of being part of a functional public hospital and wider state system, and the amazing, talented colleagues I now work with. Even now, 3 months in, I still pinch myself over the new environment I have stepped into. I think to myself, why didn’t I do this sooner?

Seeing coordinated laboratory services in action

I now work within a system I lobbied so hard to get in place in NZ. It is a network of interconnected public hospital laboratories with leadership striving to do the best for the patients relying on our services. The foundation stones are in place to consolidate and advance collaboration and excellence. It is both pleasing and frustrating for me personally to see the potential of state-wide coordination coupled with local delivery with specialized input within certain facilities. After all, this is exactly the plan I had put on the table to Health NZ and all political health spokespeople in NZ. Yet NZ continues to flounder with a duplicated, competition-based model built around corporate non-health interests and siloed public laboratories. It is still incredibly hard when I hear from my NZ colleagues bemoaning just how challenging it is for so many of our regional laboratories across NZ.

Putting wellbeing first

I have been fortunate that I accepted that I simply couldn’t continue on in such a difficult and demoralizing situation as I faced back in NZ. My story is not an isolated one for many medical laboratory scientists across many countries. Sometimes we just need to accept the inevitable and put our own personal wellbeing ahead of the seemingly greater cause.

In a way, my leaving NZ was a way more powerful statement than continuing on unhappy and struggling; it made media headlines and stirred many strong sentiments and strong reactions from other leaders.

I can say that, in a very short time here in Australia, I have got back my zest for medical laboratory science and may even start looking into true professional leadership opportunities again. After all, despite not being able to get the needed change in NZ, I now sit within a structure that I feel very comfortable promoting and helping to strengthen into the future here in Queensland.

I urge all medical laboratory professionals to invest in your own happiness and wellbeing. In a very short time in 2026 I have done exactly that.

Guest editorial submitted by Terry Taylor, clinical flow cytometry scientist for Pathology Queensland based at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, and CLINICAL24 Ambassador.