Ani­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion, pats on the back, and elbow-bump­ing paint­ed a pic­ture of the workforce’s enthu­si­asm to be back togeth­er again. 

Yet even while the laugh­ter still echoed in the mez­za­nine of the Hilton Hotel, del­e­gates were rolling up their sleeves and telling their sto­ries – of what was work­ing and what wasn’t; what they loved and what they wished dif­fer­ent; what would back­fire and what would suc­cess­ful­ly improve remote health. 

Fol­low­ing the Wel­come to Coun­try by Senior Kau­r­na Man, Uncle Mick­ey Kumat­pi O’Brien, on Wednes­day morn­ing, the busi­ly jot­ting pens, raised hands dur­ing Q&A, and robust inter­change of ideas told of the workforce’s fierce deter­mi­na­tion to improve remote health.

It made many of us feel like part of some­thing big­ger. It sug­gest­ed that, despite COVID-19’s poten­tial to dis­band our scat­tered work­force, we are now more unit­ed than ever in our col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to dri­ve pos­i­tive change. Buoyed by the com­pa­ny of inspir­ing indi­vid­u­als and ideas, many of us left, think­ing: ​“Alright, let’s do this!”

Per­haps it was a sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty – an abil­i­ty to see the bar­ri­ers lift­ing and let­ting the light in – that result­ed in this feel­ing of inspi­ra­tion and the solu­tions-focused dialogue. 

As CRANAplus CEO Kather­ine Isbis­ter said in her wel­come address, ​“It does feel like a time of hope in Aus­tralia, a time of change and a time of oppor­tu­ni­ty. The first steps are being tak­en in a Voice to Par­lia­ment. There is mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion to address cli­mate change. 

“At the nation­al nurs­ing lev­el, the devel­op­ment of a nation­al nurs­ing strat­e­gy is under­way, as is the Nurse Prac­ti­tion­er 10-year plan. A Nation­al Rur­al and Remote Nurs­ing Gen­er­al­ist Frame­work is on the cusp of being launched… It is an excit­ing time for remote area nurs­es and mid­wives and the broad­er remote workforce.”

Head­lined by Dr. Nor­man Swan, who gave a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of pan­demics past, present and future, the con­fer­ence shone because of its diver­si­ty of invit­ed speak­ers and abstract presenters.

High­lights includ­ed Dr. Simon Quilty on the health impacts of cli­mate change and cli­mate-unfriend­ly hous­ing; Prof. Sue Kildea on var­i­ous birthing on coun­try projects; Kel­lie Kerin’s dis­cus­sion of her cul­tur­al jour­ney; and Geof­frey Ange­les’ explo­ration of sca­bies and enter­tain­ing recount of his meet­ing with Antho­ny Albanese at Gar­ma Festival. 

Through these pre­sen­ta­tions and the buzz of con­ver­sa­tions in the ple­nary hall and exhi­bi­tion space, com­mon themes emerged: how to ensure health pro­fes­sion­als can put their qual­i­fi­ca­tions to use; the health impacts of cli­mate change; path­ways, pro­grams and place­ments to grow work­force avail­abil­i­ty; com­mu­ni­ty lead­er­ship and co-design; lessons learned from COVID-19 and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters; the need for fit-for-pur­pose leg­is­la­tion; and suc­cess­ful work­force models.

The wealth of ideas that cir­cu­lat­ed around these themes has hope­ful­ly giv­en every­one who attend­ed, includ­ing the team at CRANAplus, ample mate­r­i­al to pon­der and put into prac­tice, as we build towards our organisation’s 40^th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions at next year’s conference. 

We’re very excit­ed to see many of you again next year, and will make announce­ments soon – stay tuned on our social media pages, newslet­ter and website. 

Thanks are due to our amaz­ing spon­sors and exhibitors, who enabled us to deliv­er an event of this scope. Spe­cial thank yous go to our prin­ci­pal part­ner, Ade­laide Con­ven­tion Bureau; major part­ner, Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty Rur­al and Remote Health; gala din­ner spon­sor, James Cook Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tre for Rur­al and Remote Health; cof­fee cart spon­sor CATSI­NaM; and cater­ing spon­sor, RAHC.

A full list of spon­sors and exhibitors can be found on the con­fer­ence web­site.