The oppor­tu­ni­ty to work in Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander health has long been an ambi­tion of mine. I am 26 years old and am cur­rent­ly in my final year of nurs­ing at Aus­tralian Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty in Bal­larat, Victoria. 

I grew up in a small town just out­side of Bal­larat, and although I have spent the major­i­ty of my adult life trav­el­ling and work­ing through­out Aus­tralia and var­i­ous coun­tries over­seas, I still had very lim­it­ed per­son­al expo­sure to Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander cul­ture, com­mu­ni­ty and their expe­ri­ences of health.

As my sec­ond year at uni­ver­si­ty came to its con­clu­sion, I began to seek the oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­take a third-year clin­i­cal nurs­ing place­ment in an Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty in the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry. I dis­cov­ered the Cen­tre for Remote Health (CRH), which is a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed organ­i­sa­tion pro­vid­ing health-relat­ed ter­tiary edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties through­out Cen­tral Aus­tralia. I con­tact­ed their team who were incred­i­bly help­ful and will­ing to facil­i­tate a clin­i­cal nurs­ing place­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty on my behalf.

A four-week place­ment in April 2021 was organ­ised at Ten­nant Creek Hos­pi­tal with an addi­tion­al spot fit­ting­ly award­ed to Jessie Mod­ra, a fel­low Bal­larat ACU nurs­ing stu­dent. The two of us set off togeth­er as com­plete strangers to each oth­er, and to Ten­nant Creek.

Our stay was accom­mo­dat­ed by Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty and coor­di­nat­ed by their Ten­nant Creek Place­ment Sup­port Coor­di­na­tor, who gra­cious­ly guid­ed and sup­port­ed us through­out our stay. Jessie was placed in the Emer­gency Depart­ment for four weeks, while I spent three weeks in the 20-bed gen­er­al ward, two days in the Renal Dial­y­sis Unit con­sist­ing of 16 chairs, one day in the Mid­wifery Unit, and two days in the hos­pi­tal-run GP Clinic.

From day one, the inequitable real­i­ties fac­ing Ten­nant Creek’s Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty were blind­ing­ly evi­dent. From a health per­spec­tive, I was con­front­ed by a stag­ger­ing bur­den of dis­ease – many con­di­tions of which I had nev­er heard of – at gross­ly-dis­pro­por­tion­ate preva­lence rates, which are often on par with some of the poor­est devel­op­ing coun­tries in the world.

This inequitable bur­den of dis­ease and its sub­se­quent dimin­ished qual­i­ty of life stan­dards were par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in the Renal Dial­y­sis Unit, where com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as young as 40 years old were receiv­ing Haemodialysis.

Despite this, the most con­fronting rev­e­la­tion I took away from this expe­ri­ence was still the dis­em­pow­er­ment I saw with­in the Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty in Ten­nant Creek. It was this sense I got that their voic­es remained unheard, and that some peo­ple did not seem to realise that they deserved so much more from life than what has been avail­able to them.

This expe­ri­ence was tru­ly life-chang­ing and marks the start­ing point in my career that endeav­ours to help improve Indige­nous health stan­dards. I think it is incred­i­bly impor­tant for con­tin­ued aware­ness to be spread about the real­i­ties our Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander com­mu­ni­ties face, pri­mar­i­ly from the voic­es and per­spec­tives of our Indige­nous pop­u­la­tions. Con­tin­ued work place­ment and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able for stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als across Aus­tralia are great enablers for con­tin­ued pro­gres­sion towards clos­ing the gap.

I thank all those involved in mak­ing this expe­ri­ence a real­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly CRANAplus for their finan­cial support.