Over the dura­tion of my four weeks of clin­i­cal place­ment at Goulburn’s men­tal health facil­i­ty, Chisholm Ross Cen­tre, in region­al New South Wales, I worked with an amaz­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team con­sist­ing of reg­is­tered nurs­es, physi­a­trists, psy­chol­o­gists, social work­ers and peer work­ers. All were very wel­com­ing to me as a young stu­dent in a new envi­ron­ment and I was pro­vid­ed with many edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties which I will car­ry with me into my career over the com­ing years.

I was intro­duced to many patients liv­ing with men­tal ill­ness who were expe­ri­enc­ing relapse and cri­sis. I devel­oped many mean­ing­ful pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships with a mul­ti­tude of patients, and was priv­i­leged to watch them progress through their jour­ney of men­tal health recovery.

Recent gov­ern­ment data sug­gests a mere 1.1% of Aus­tralian nurs­es and mid­wives iden­ti­fied as Indige­nous Aus­tralians. By obtain­ing a Bach­e­lor of Nurs­ing I will give back to my Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty by rep­re­sent­ing our mob as a Reg­is­tered Nurse.

Upon grad­u­a­tion I aspire to work in Abo­rig­i­nal health as an Indige­nous nurse with an aim to assist in clos­ing the cur­rent health gap. By employ­ing a grass­roots approach I hope to cre­ate true change for the cur­rent health sta­tus of our First Nations people.

I am a proud suc­cess­ful appli­cant of the Aussiewide Trans­port Schol­ar­ship, one of the Under­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Remote Place­ment Schol­ar­ships pro­vid­ed by CRANAplus this year. This mon­e­tary assis­tance con­sid­er­ably aid­ed me over the four weeks of my clin­i­cal nurs­ing placement.

These place­ments great­ly pre­pare stu­dents to be com­pe­tent and con­fi­dent nurs­es upon grad­u­a­tion, but the finan­cial stress is lim­it­ing, as there is no employ­ment income for the peri­od of the place­ments. It places great strain on stu­dents who have to pay bills, pur­chase gro­ceries and sim­ply buy fuel for your car. The gen­er­ous schol­ar­ship award­ed to me by CRANAplus alle­vi­at­ed part of my mon­e­tary stress as I was able to use the funds of my schol­ar­ship to refu­el my car each week to attend clin­i­cal place­ment. Thank you CRANAplus.