Cairns local and reg­is­tered nurse Madi­son Clark first head­ed remote in March 2021, when she com­menced a three-month tran­si­tion to remote prac­tice in Lock­hart Riv­er through the Tor­res and Cape Hos­pi­tal and Health Service.

“I’ve always being inter­est­ed in Indige­nous health and the strug­gles Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties face in regard to chron­ic ill­ness­es and liv­ing in remote loca­tions and not hav­ing access to the same kind of health­care you have in a city,” Madi­son says.

“I spoke to one of the edu­ca­tors before going up [to Lock­hart Riv­er] and told her remote nurs­ing was some­thing I real­ly want­ed to do, but that I wasn’t ful­ly com­fort­able being a clin­i­cal nurse in remote envi­ron­ment, which is when she offered me the tran­si­tion program.

“I went there are as a reg­is­tered nurse and I was super­nu­mer­ary, so I was very well sup­port­ed the whole time. The DON and CNs have been real­ly incred­i­ble in help­ing us to get lots of learn­ing opportunities.”

Since Lock­hart Riv­er, Madi­son has worked in Bam­a­ga and had just com­menced work­ing on Thurs­day Island at time of writ­ing. The expe­ri­ence and sup­port of sur­round­ing staff and man­age­ment has con­tin­ued to impress her.

“The nurse edu­ca­tors are love­ly,” she says.

“Before I came to TI, I want­ed to do a Triage course and they made that hap­pen. When in Lock­hart, they flew me home for a week to com­plete a num­ber of courses.”

Madi­son notes that remote health employ­ment isn’t all a bed of ros­es. She says iso­la­tion and miss­ing fam­i­ly events can be chal­leng­ing, but that her six weeks on, two weeks off arrange­ment allows her to spend val­ued time with loved ones.

Even dur­ing her stints away, she says ​“You’d be sur­prised how quick­ly the com­mu­ni­ty turns into home, and how easy it is to make friends.

“By the end of it you feel like you’re a part of the com­mu­ni­ty,” she says. ​“Peo­ple come in and they know who you are. You go to the shops and peo­ple will have a chat to you.

“When I was in Lock­hart, every­one was very invit­ing. I got to go down to the beach with some of the Elder women. They showed me how to make woven bas­kets out of pan­danus leaves – cut­ting, burn­ing, weaving.

“As we were doing it, they’d be telling us sto­ries about old Lockhart.

“There was one old­er lady who has a bit of demen­tia who I fell in love with while I was up there. I think she was gor­geous. She said: ​‘you’re doing it wrong’, took the knife from me and start­ed doing it. My heart dropped. She’ll end up in the clin­ic with her fin­ger off, I thought – but she did it so well. I was so impressed.

“The thing I real­ly enjoy about work­ing with small com­mu­ni­ties is that you get to see the impact you’re mak­ing in someone’s life… In PHCs, clients come in reg­u­lar­ly and you see that what you’re teach­ing them is work­ing; they’re doing it. Then you see them out­side of work, too – it’s real­ly nice.”

Madi­son says her favourite aspects of the role include the scope of prac­tice, the auton­o­my, and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing among a team of skilled nurs­es in a set­ting where doc­tors are not always present, but rather dialled in via TV screen dur­ing cer­tain emer­gen­cies. She savours the diver­si­ty of work­ing alter­nate­ly in PHC set­tings and hospitals.

Mean­while, out­side of work hours, she enjoys soak­ing up the Tip and the Islands.

“I’m look­ing out of my bal­cony at the moment,” she says. ​“There’s a beach and the ocean is dead-flat. It’s hot and humid. It’s an island paradise.

“Since start­ing on Thurs­day Island, I’ve become friends with one of my room­mates. We all go for a walk down to the beach, to the pub to get din­ner, to the cof­fee shop for a cof­fee and a donut – there’s so much to do here.

“On my days off in Lock­hart, we had access to a car, and me and my friends went down to Chilli Beach before work most morn­ings. It’s one of the most beau­ti­ful beach­es I’ve ever been to… In Bam­a­ga, I spent a short hol­i­day camp­ing with friends on the Old Tele­graph Track in the four-wheel dri­ve of a nurse who had dri­ven up.”

Since work­ing in the region she has also start­ed fish­ing for the first time and has already caught a coral trout so large she couldn’t reel it up from the depths herself.

When asked how she sees the next five years pan­ning out, Madi­son says that for her, it’s remote all the way and that she may look to upskill through post-grad­u­ate stud­ies in emer­gency nurs­ing to pre­pare for very remote PHCs.

“Since start­ing with Tor­res and Cape, what has struck me is how wel­com­ing the com­mu­ni­ty are of hav­ing good health work­ers come in, and how trust­ing they can be of peo­ple as well,” Madi­son says.

She advis­es nurs­es who are eager to pur­sue remote health to ​“con­tact the Tor­res and Cape Hos­pi­tal and Health Ser­vice and see what posi­tions they have avail­able to suit your skills.”