A for­mer Board Mem­ber of CRANAplus in a time of sig­nif­i­cant change and a Fel­low of CRANAplus since 2016, Kathryn has main­tained a strong con­nec­tion with the organ­i­sa­tion over the years.

“Even though I have no remote back­ground in a tra­di­tion­al sense, I am ful­ly com­mit­ted to the work of CRANAplus,” she says, ​“and will always be a strong advo­cate for the organisation.”

Kathryn com­menced her nurs­ing career at Flinders Med­ical Cen­tre pre­dom­i­nate­ly as a Reg­is­tered Nurse in Acci­dent and Emer­gency. Because of her back­ground in emer­gency care and as a vol­un­teer ambu­lance offi­cer, Kathryn applied for a role in 1998 to help devel­op a Remote Emer­gency Care (REC) edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram for CRANAplus.

“It was the first pro­gram specif­i­cal­ly for the remote set­ting. There was noth­ing like it at all in those days,” says Kathryn.

“I hadn’t heard of CRANAplus until that moment. What struck me most was that nurs­es in remote set­tings were work­ing at the top of their licence, doing pro­ce­dures that nurs­es in oth­er set­tings are still not allowed to do. I was and still am so impressed.

“We were doing some very advanced skills in those pro­grams, skills such as infu­sions for babies, chest drain inser­tions and intubations.

“To this day, you won’t find city nurs­es doing these pro­ce­dures, but we had to have them in the cur­ricu­lum because this range of skills in remote set­tings is life-sav­ing. If they’re not done, if no-one is avail­able because of dis­tances, peo­ple die.”

Kathryn ran the first four pilot REC pro­grams – in Broome, Port Augus­ta, FNQ and Alice Springs – and has since been a facil­i­ta­tor of cours­es across the country.

Again, in 2002, she reviewed the Remote Emer­gency Care pro­gram, and is proud the cours­es being pro­vid­ed by CRANAplus ​“still [fea­ture] ele­ments we set up in the very ear­ly days.”

Kathryn, who com­plet­ed her PhD the­sis in clin­i­cal nurs­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide in Feb­ru­ary 2003, joined the Board in 2011 and served for six years dur­ing a peri­od of sig­nif­i­cant organ­i­sa­tion­al growth.

“It had been a very small organ­i­sa­tion when we ran the first cours­es,” she says.

“When I joined the Board, it had grown, and it grew even more in every area: the ser­vices pro­vid­ed to mem­bers, the fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties they have estab­lished, and the sup­port now pro­vid­ed to the rur­al and remote sec­tor in general.”

Dur­ing her time on the Board, Zeitz Enter­pris­es, a busi­ness run by Kathryn and her car­di­ol­o­gist hus­band who does a lot of rur­al and out­reach work, began spon­sor­ing remote place­ments for health stu­dents through the CRANAplus program.

“We both see a huge ben­e­fit from encour­ag­ing stu­dents to do clin­i­cal place­ments in rur­al and remote set­tings, for many rea­sons,” Kathryn says.

“While the place­ments are impor­tant for the stu­dents’ edu­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence and help to attract peo­ple to work in rur­al and remote set­tings, I believe the place­ments also play a sig­nif­i­cant role in advocacy.

“Even if the stu­dents don’t go on to work in these rur­al and remote set­tings, the expe­ri­ence makes them much more com­pas­sion­ate and under­stand­ing when they get that phone call from a remote prac­ti­tion­er, because they are aware of the work the health work­ers do out there and the lim­i­ta­tions they work under.”

With a diverse career in acute hos­pi­tal oper­a­tional man­age­ment, Kathryn has been Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Clin­i­cal Gov­er­nance at Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Net­work for three years. She is both an Adjunct Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor with Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty and Clin­i­cal Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor for The Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide and has been a mem­ber of St John Ambu­lance Aus­tralia, in a vol­un­tary capac­i­ty, for 30 years, most recent­ly join­ing their Aus­tralian Board.