Leonie Hig­gs has spent the last five months work­ing full-time for Aurukun Health Ser­vice, after mak­ing a rad­i­cal change from a career in met­ro­pol­i­tan hos­pi­tals and major trau­ma centres.

“I was at that stage of my career when I was think­ing, I’m tired of emer­gency, I’m tired of trau­ma,” Leonie says. ​“There has to be some­thing else out there in nursing.

“It’s not until you actu­al­ly come out into the remote com­mu­ni­ties that you realise, yeah, I can make a dif­fer­ence… It quick­ly becomes clear how much nurs­es are need­ed and appreciated.

“I feel more val­ued out here than in the major hos­pi­tals. [There] you sta­bilise clients and move them onto their spe­cial­i­ty, and that’s the end of that. Where­as here it’s more chron­ic. It’s health lit­er­a­cy, edu­ca­tion, and being here all the time.

“In the metro set­ting, all the junior doc­tors or NPs that are com­ing through do all the things like plas­ter­ing, sutur­ing, sta­pling, man­ag­ing peo­ple with pain. Where­as here, you get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn all of these skills and our scope opens up.”

Dur­ing her two days off a week, Leonie occa­sion­al­ly heads to Aurukun Land­ing, lis­tens to music (“Strict­ly RnB” includ­ing SIX60 and L.A.B.), and stud­ies her mas­ters in Geron­tol­ogy, which she is set to com­plete by 2023.

When out and about, she’s often in the com­pa­ny of camp dog Boo, with whom she’s devel­oped a mutu­al bond.

Leonie says that com­ing from a Māori back­ground, her fam­i­ly is her life force, and so it’s been hard to be apart. How­ev­er, she’s found ways to stay close. 

“I talk to them every day, I Face Time them,” she says. ​“My fam­i­ly is real­ly, real­ly good. They under­stand. I dis­cussed it with my fam­i­ly [before leav­ing] and my hus­band said to me, ​‘If that’s what you want to do, you go. If you find you enjoy it, I’ll stay home with our youngest child and take care of the house’.”

Main­tain­ing these con­nec­tions with fam­i­ly and devel­op­ing new con­nec­tions with her team has helped Leonie to man­age the work and the on-call hours.

“You know that if any­thing goes pear-shaped while you’re at work, they’re there,” Leonie says, speak­ing of her team. ​“They’ve got your back. These peo­ple were all strangers to me before I came here, but you learn to rely on your col­leagues. You trea­sure their skills and what they have to offer.”

The con­nec­tions she has formed with com­mu­ni­ty have also helped Leonie to feel at home: “[Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty] get to know you and they ask for you specif­i­cal­ly. It’s like you get to be part of their fam­i­lies.

​“I’ve got one lady here who want­ed to adopt me. I said to her ​‘Thank you so much, I appre­ci­ate it, but I have a family’.

“She’s got dia­betes, and she knows I’m going on leave tomor­row, and she says to me, ​‘Girl, I’ll come see you at the air­port.’ I said, ​‘Oh no, Aun­tie, don’t come and see me off because I know it’s dif­fi­cult for you to get there and I’ll be back in three weeks.’ You build those rela­tion­ships with the locals that you treasure.”

Leonie has a Māori moko kauae, a tra­di­tion­al facial tat­too that rep­re­sents who she is, where she is from, and the sto­ry of her peo­ple, the Ngāti Porou, who are cus­to­di­ans of the Gis­borne region on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

Her her­itage increas­es her aware­ness of the strug­gles faced by Australia’s First Peo­ples, but she empha­sis­es that no one can under­stand these bet­ter than Indige­nous Aus­tralians themselves.

“My peo­ple have come such a long way with health lit­er­a­cy,” she says. ​“We have doc­tors, we have Māori nurs­es. And you come to this big coun­try called Aus­tralia and into these remote com­mu­ni­ties and see how some First Nations peo­ple are liv­ing in chal­leng­ing con­di­tions and hav­ing to trav­el long dis­tances to access basic health services.

“You have to get Indige­nous work­ers for Indige­nous peo­ple. They under­stand, they know what they’re going through, and they can relate.

“Even though I’m black, they class me as white because I’ve dropped into this com­mu­ni­ty. Some of them have nev­er seen a Māori per­son before. They’re like, ​‘What you got that tat­too on your chin for?’ When you sit down and explain it to them, they’re like, ​‘Oh, that’s beautiful.’

“We need to sup­port our First Nations peo­ple to help improve health out­comes, so that Elders can pass on their valu­able knowl­edge and skills to the next gen­er­a­tions to follow.”

When CRANAplus spoke with Leonie in Jan­u­ary, she had recent­ly applied for her con­tract to be extend­ed for six months. While she isn’t sure what the next five years hold, she says ​“One thing I know for sure is that I absolute­ly enjoy being a remote nurse and being a part of a team that real­ly cares. It’s lib­er­at­ing to feel that you’re con­tribut­ing to the com­mu­ni­ty and mak­ing a difference. 

“If I could have done this long ago, I would have. Hindsight’s a beau­ti­ful thing.

“I think [met­ro­pol­i­tan nurs­es] should just do it, if they have even the tini­est inkling to come remote. Oth­er­wise, they don’t know whether they’ll like it or not. You miss out on so many things if you aren’t open to new expe­ri­ences. You’ve got to take the plunge.”