Beck Peck, Reg­is­tered Nurse and Mid­wife, took full advan­tage of her CRANAplus Nurs­es Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion of SA Grant to under­take the Advanced Life Sup­port course with CRANAplus.

“The skills I learned in the ALS course are def­i­nite­ly some­thing that will be very use­ful in the future,” says Beck, who is cur­rent­ly work­ing in mater­ni­ty at the Mid­wifery Group Prac­tice in Broome in West­ern Aus­tralia as a grad­u­ate Midwife.

As an agency nurse, Beck has to pay for her own pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment in cours­es and study, which she is more than hap­py to do to main­tain best prac­tice stan­dards and knowledge.

“I’ve done many CRANAplus cours­es and I find each one great,” she says. ​“I am involved in an organ­i­sa­tion called Sur­vive First Aid, help­ing to run five-day wilder­ness sur­vival first aid train­ing cours­es, and the ALS course will cer­tain­ly be use­ful in pass­ing on skills and shar­ing knowledge.”

Beck, from Perth in WA, has for many years worked in region­al, rur­al and remote loca­tions and, because her four daugh­ters are now adults, she is stretch­ing her reach fur­ther than a few hours from home. 

Dur­ing COVID-19 she bought her­self a motorhome to under­take region­al COVID-19 work on the road.

She has now swapped that motorhome for a Troopy – her sights still firm­ly set on nurs­ing in more remote loca­tions in the future.

Beck also does some short stints on her breaks from Broome in mul­ti-pur­pose sites staffed by only two nurs­es per shift, using emer­gency tele­health ser­vices for back-up and Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tors for transfers.

“Those mul­ti-pur­pose region­al sites are always short-staffed and I enjoy the work in dif­fer­ent loca­tions see­ing many parts of WA.”

Michelle McGuirk, an Alice Springs girl, cur­rent­ly work­ing for Cen­tral Aus­tralian Abo­rig­i­nal Con­gress in the area of Con­tin­u­ous Qual­i­ty Improve­ment, has used her grant to fund a Remote Emer­gency Care (REC) course, which is part of her plan to get back into clin­i­cal practice.

Michelle, a nurse since 2007, orig­i­nal­ly trained in the area of alco­hol and drug mis­use and worked at the Alice Springs hos­pi­tal before mov­ing into the hospital’s dig­i­tal and tele­health arena.

“I recog­nised the para­mount impor­tance of good com­mu­ni­ca­tion with remote com­mu­ni­ties and saw the ben­e­fits that dig­i­tal and tele­health could pro­vide,” she says. 

“I am so glad we got the sys­tems up and run­ning before the pan­dem­ic. Dig­i­tal health and tele­health are so impor­tant in keep­ing care plans on track, avoid­ing incon­sis­ten­cies, pro­vid­ing essen­tial care.”

Hav­ing been with the Con­gress for a year now, look­ing at qual­i­ty assur­ance with­in sys­tems, per­for­mance and resources for the Abo­rig­i­nal Com­mu­ni­ty Con­trolled Health Ser­vices, Michelle is keen to work in the organisation’s remote clin­ics. The Con­gress cur­rent­ly has five remote clin­ics but expan­sion is on the radar.

“I have want­ed to get back into the clin­i­cal scope and into pri­ma­ry health care in par­tic­u­lar for some time, and I’ve start­ed doing some nurs­ing shifts,” she says.

“I think CRANAplus is real­ly well suit­ed for some­one like me who has spe­cialised in a par­tic­u­lar area and is ready to go back into clin­i­cal prac­tice. The REC course was ter­rif­ic, and I am now doing a lot of the CRANAplus assess­ment pack­ages, com­plet­ing as many as I can.

“By the end of the year, when the clin­ics are short-staffed, I hope to be out there.”

For Reg­is­tered Nurse Amelia Rob­son, the grant mon­ey was used for a Remote Emer­gency Care (REC) course to main­tain the remote skill set she devel­oped over two years out on Groote Eylandt.

Amelia had moved to Nhu­lun­buy on the main­land to work in the rur­al hos­pi­tal when she under­took the REC course in Dar­win, and is now work­ing in the region­al town of Bun­bury in WA.

“I will be step­ping back into the remote space when the tim­ing is right,” says Amelia.

“On Groote Eylandt, I was so for­tu­nate to have a man­ag­er and a team who sup­port­ed my tran­si­tion to remote. I had excel­lent ori­en­ta­tion, learned heaps about what it means to be a remote area nurse, and I was encour­aged to do a num­ber of cours­es as part of its New to Remote Program.

“I know of nurs­es who haven’t been so for­tu­nate. And they don’t last. For me it was a grad­ual intro­duc­tion, always work­ing with some­one else and a good six months before I was on-call.”

Amelia had worked in the emer­gency depart­ment in Dar­win Hos­pi­tal and was with WA Coun­try Health Ser­vice before this post, but says it was very dif­fer­ent to remote.

“I think the biggest dif­fer­ence as a RAN is that you need to think a lot more com­pre­hen­sive­ly for each patient,” she says.

“Using the CARPA man­u­al and oth­er resources you are expect­ed to think and work at a high­er lev­el of prac­tice. For each patient, you need to decide what assess­ments are required, what is the pri­or­i­ty, what can be done oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly and what fur­ther advice or treat­ment path­ways may be required by refer­ring to the clin­ic GP, on-call Rur­al Med­ical Offi­cer, or arrang­ing for emer­gency evacuation.

“It’s a dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion, leav­ing remote. When you move out of that space you obvi­ous­ly have a lot of trans­ferrable skills so I use them when I can. I have also cho­sen to close a few gaps in my skill set so am cur­rent­ly under­tak­ing a Post­grad­u­ate Cer­tifi­cate in Emer­gency Nursing.

“That will be very use­ful when I get back into the rur­al or remote space.”