“Some girls fol­low in their mother’s foot­steps. I’m a grand­son who fol­lowed in my grand­moth­ers’ foot­steps.” So says reg­is­tered nurse and mid­wife Kep­pel Schafer who has always want­ed to work in health­care. ​“One grand­moth­er was a nurse and mid­wife, and the oth­er worked as an assis­tant nurse in a mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal. It’s in the blood I guess.”

Kep­pel, who cur­rent­ly works out of For­ti­tude Val­ley in Bris­bane for Queens­land Health in a state-wide role for its e‑Health depart­ment, has been a facil­i­ta­tor for CRANAplus since 2011, hav­ing con­duct­ed scores of cours­es in every state and ter­ri­to­ry in Aus­tralia apart from the ACT.

“One of the rea­sons I remain so engaged is because I absolute­ly val­ue the con­tri­bu­tion remote health work­ers make to some of the most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try from a health per­spec­tive,” Kep­pel says.

“What I love most is that facil­i­tat­ing keeps me ground­ed and con­nect­ed. When I am back in the urban set­ting, with all the machines that go ping and exten­sive resources are avail­able, I think of the peo­ple who are deliv­er­ing health­care in some of the most try­ing conditions.”

When he’s not facil­i­tat­ing CRANAplus cours­es, Kep­pel is heav­i­ly involved in sup­port­ing pro­grams replac­ing paper-based clin­i­cal charts with dig­i­tal records.

“More and more health­care is being enabled and influ­enced by dig­i­tal con­tact,” says Kep­pel who sees this devel­op­ment as a major plus for pop­u­la­tions that are quite mobile and First Nations peo­ple are a prime example.

“Twen­ty years ago the GP would write your details on an index card and it would stay there. Now, using dig­i­tal records, the infor­ma­tion can be shared more wide­ly,” he says.

In Queens­land, there are 17 hos­pi­tals con­nect­ed on one plat­form, with GPs also able to access cer­tain infor­ma­tion on a read-only basis. Kep­pel is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the inte­gra­tion of pri­ma­ry health­care infor­ma­tion, which will par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit patients and GPs in iso­lat­ed areas.

“I’ve always had a burn­ing desire to help rur­al and remote and iso­lat­ed loca­tions, and, at the moment, I feel my con­tri­bu­tion is by being a vol­un­teer facil­i­ta­tor for CRANAplus.”

Kep­pel is involved with the Mater­ni­ty Emer­gency Care (MEC) course and Mid­wifery Upskilling (MIDUS) course.

“With the MEC course, we work with remote area nurs­es with lit­tle or no expe­ri­ence in mater­ni­ty care, giv­ing them foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge in the care of women and babies and pro­vid­ing some skills for their tool box that alle­vi­ates their anx­i­ety about being involved in child­birth and mater­nal and neona­tal emergencies.

“The upskilling course recon­nects mid­wives work­ing in remote loca­tions with the lat­est evi­dence and infor­ma­tion. In addi­tion, these mid­wives are prac­tis­ing in iso­lat­ed con­di­tions, both geo­graph­i­cal­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and this course also helps them recon­nect with the profession.

“Across both cours­es, we, as facil­i­ta­tors, always learn some­thing from the par­tic­i­pants. This two-way knowl­edge-shar­ing nev­er fails to reaf­firm why I love facilitating.

“While home births are increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in cities and big towns, there’s more and more empha­sis today on encour­ag­ing women in rur­al and region­al areas to go where there’s a big hos­pi­tal,” he says.

“I think it is a real­ly sig­nif­i­cant piece of pol­i­cy work that the gov­ern­ment shies away from.

It is com­plex and laden with cul­tur­al and social over­tones. I come from a very small town and I, along with all my sib­lings, was born in that coun­try town. None of my mother’s grand­chil­dren have been born there, they had to be born in the near­est big hos­pi­tal. That was a strug­gle for my moth­er to deal with.”

Kep­pel says he under­took mid­wifery ini­tial­ly because he want­ed to be an RFDS flight nurse.

“I con­sid­er myself very for­tu­nate to have the career that I have had while still only in my 30s,” he says. ​“For var­i­ous rea­sons, I haven’t yet done flight nurs­ing, but it’s still a thought that’s there.”