No stranger to lob­by­ing and advo­ca­cy over the past 40 years, Pro­fes­sor Sabi­na Knight has tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty with this lat­est award to urge the nurs­ing com­mu­ni­ty to pur­pose­ly use their posi­tion in one of the most trust­ed pro­fes­sions through­out Aus­tralia to speak ​“reg­u­lar­ly, rea­son­ably and often” in sup­port of vac­ci­na­tion for COVID-19.

“Nev­er has there been a time more impor­tant for nurs­es to speak up as advo­cates,” says Sabi­na, who is one of three CRANAplus rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Nation­al COVID-19 Clin­i­cal Evi­dence Taskforce.

“We as nurs­es are a trust­ed voice in the com­mu­ni­ty. We real­ly have got to acti­vate that posi­tion of trust with this issue. Every nurse has got to do it. We have to hon­our our pro­fes­sion and code of ethics – which requires us to use evi­dence-based sci­ence in clin­i­cal deci­sion mak­ing and our work; to talk to our col­leagues, our neigh­bours, fam­i­ly, friends and the com­mu­ni­ty. Keep talk­ing. Be avail­able to com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions, media, work groups and talk.”

Sabi­na would like to see a strate­gic, strong nurse-led cam­paign to improve the uptake of the vaccination.

“We have been a bit slow as advo­cates,” Sabi­na says. ​“It’s time now to be strate­gic and proac­tive to deal with the uncer­tain­ty and hes­i­tan­cy in the gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ty. We know how to live and work with uncer­tain­ty but the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion is not used to chang­ing advice with emerg­ing evidence.

“We are already active and engaged in adult and child immu­ni­sa­tion and have some of the best cov­er­age in Aus­tralia so should use this con­fi­dence to pro­mote vac­ci­na­tion against COVID-19 and remind peo­ple that they may still get the infec­tion but will not get seri­ous­ly ill or poten­tial­ly die from it.

“In these times, we def­i­nite­ly want peo­ple to be vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, and we have to deal with con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion, chang­ing advice and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to reas­sure peo­ple and help them to under­stand the risks and ben­e­fits in accu­rate and under­stand­able terms.

“I am emi­nent­ly proud of what we have done with­in CRANAplus, but I am also very proud of my fel­low RANs who have and con­tin­ue to get involved in rur­al devel­op­ment, capac­i­ty build­ing, lead­er­ship and lead­er­ship pro­grammes, region­al devel­op­ment boards and so forth. Remote Area Nurs­es and health pro­fes­sion­als and nurs­es in gen­er­al are well aware of the social deter­mi­nants of health – the close rela­tion­ship between health and people’s liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions – and that’s why many are involved in action and activ­i­ties out­side the pure­ly clin­i­cal envi­ron­ment,” says Sabina.

“Health is polit­i­cal, isn’t it? Health care resources are finite and the remote voice is impor­tant to ensure appro­pri­ate access and dis­tri­b­u­tion. We’ve got to speak up col­lec­tive­ly and rea­son­ably – well informed by evi­dence. And, in my opin­ion, at this par­tic­u­lar moment, it’s time we speak up, ful­ly sup­port and advo­cate for the COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion roll-out.”

Sabina’s lat­est award fol­lows a dou­ble achieve­ment in 2020 – as the recip­i­ent of the pres­ti­gious Auro­ra Award, which CRANAplus awards each year to recog­nise an indi­vid­ual who has made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to remote health, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been recog­nised in 2004.

She is a Cen­te­nary Medal­list, and also is pleased that this is the year when a com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign she ini­ti­at­ed in 2012, in con­junc­tion with oth­er advo­cates, has final­ly reaped rewards with new fed­er­al gov­ern­ment stan­dards that will require all quad bikes be fit­ted with crush pro­tec­tion devices and oth­er safe­ty fea­tures at the point of sale.