The Fed­er­al Region­al Health Min­is­ter Mark Coul­ton, and Mem­ber for Leich­hardt War­ren Entsch MP, have today vis­it­ed the Cairns office of not-for-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion CRANAplus to dis­cuss issues affect­ing nurs­es who work in remote and iso­lat­ed parts of Australia.

The meet­ing between Min­is­ter Coul­ton and CRANAplus was the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the recent­ly released 2021 – 22 Fed­er­al Bud­get ini­tia­tives tar­get­ing rur­al and remote health, Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander health, aged care and men­tal health support.

CRANAplus CEO Kather­ine Isbis­ter said​“it was fan­tas­tic to see Min­is­ter Coul­ton so recep­tive to the con­cerns of remote nurses”.

“We thank Min­is­ter Coul­ton for his vis­it and for con­tin­u­ing to be active­ly devot­ed to pro­tect­ing and advanc­ing the remote health work­force,” Ms Isbis­ter said.

“Thank you again to Min­is­ter Coul­ton for recog­nis­ing that empow­er­ing the remote health work­force remains cru­cial in the ongo­ing fight for health equality.”

“Work­ing togeth­er, we have the pow­er to improve health out­comes – for all Aus­tralians, espe­cial­ly Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ple liv­ing in remote communities.”

“Main­tain­ing a pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion with the key deci­sion mak­ers across all lev­els of gov­ern­ment is key to CRANAplus’ advo­ca­cy for remote health pro­fes­sion­als,” Ms Isbis­ter added.

“By advo­cat­ing for pos­i­tive change in terms of pol­i­cy, fund­ing and resourc­ing, we aim to improve access to qual­i­ty, safe health care, and to ensure Aus­tralia has the much-need­ed skills, resources and staff in remote areas.”

Mem­bers of the edu­ca­tion team at CRANAplus were also able to demon­strate to Min­is­ter Coul­ton and Mr Entsch their excit­ing new train­ing tech­nol­o­gy, now built into CRANAplus cours­es tai­lored to the remote health setting.

Known as iSim­u­late, the tech­nol­o­gy sim­u­lates real-life defib­ril­la­tors and mon­i­tors, increas­ing fideli­ty with­in sim­u­lat­ed real-life situations.

“Hav­ing iden­ti­fied that this tech­nol­o­gy could enhance real-life emer­gency man­age­ment skills, we made the move to incor­po­rate iSim­u­late into our Advanced Life Sup­port and Emer­gency Care cours­es,” CRANAplus CEO Kather­ine Isbis­ter said.

“Emer­gency sit­u­a­tions in a remote and iso­lat­ed health set­ting call for an exact­ing response. Any­thing that we can do to help health pro­fes­sion­als pre­pare to effec­tive­ly and safe­ly deliv­er that response, we will do.”

“For a peri­od, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic saw CRANAplus focus­ing on its online course pro­gram, so we could con­tin­ue to deliv­er cru­cial edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to remote and iso­lat­ed health professionals.”

“How­ev­er, we nev­er lost sight of the impor­tance of face-to-face learn­ing and are now look­ing for ways to reward our mem­bers and sup­port remote com­mu­ni­ties by fur­ther refin­ing and mod­ernising our in-per­­son cours­es. This is just the beginning.”

Media inquiries
Con­tact: Denise Wilt­shire
Ph: 0419 359 325
E: denise@​crana.​org.​au