After 20 years in pub­lic hos­pi­tals in her home state of New South Wales, RN Lor­raine Har­ry sam­pled remote work with a stint in Mt Isa 12 years ago, before com­menc­ing as a nurse in the Ter­ri­to­ry nine years ago. 

Lor­raine has worked at the Man­ingri­da Pri­ma­ry Health Cen­tre since 2017, ini­tial­ly with NT Health. Then in 2020, she accept­ed a role as Qual­i­ty and Safe­ty Coor­di­na­tor with Mala’la Abo­rig­i­nal Health Ser­vice, short­ly before the ser­vice com­menced its final pro­gram-by-pro­gram tran­si­tion from gov­ern­ment to com­mu­ni­ty control.

“Mala’la offered me a posi­tion to look at their gaps with the tran­si­tion based on a NT Health gap analy­sis report,” Lor­raine recalls. 

“Even though the organ­i­sa­tion has been around for more than 20 years, tak­ing on the pri­ma­ry health sec­tor tripled the organ­i­sa­tion in size. 

“Part of my role was to ensure we had all the qual­i­ty and risk man­age­ment sys­tems, ser­vices and process­es in place to sup­port a safe and qual­i­ty focused pri­ma­ry health service.

” To oper­ate a ser­vice as an Abo­rig­i­nal Com­mu­ni­ty Con­trolled Health Organ­i­sa­tion (ACCHO), it is nec­es­sary for a cor­po­ra­tion to gain mul­ti­ple accreditations. 

The NT Gov­ern­ment hand­ed the last remain­ing pro­grams to Mala’la Health Ser­vice Abo­rig­i­nal Cor­po­ra­tion in Feb­ru­ary 2021, giv­ing them three months to pre­pare for Aus­tralian Gen­er­al Prac­tice Accred­i­ta­tion Lim­it­ed (AGPAL) accred­i­ta­tion sur­vey that May. 

That they gained accred­i­ta­tion on the first attempt reflects the hard work of the team, includ­ing Lor­raine, who – among oth­er achieve­ments – helped imple­ment of Logiqc Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem and Com­mu­ni­care med­ical records system. 

“Logiqc has every­thing in one space, acces­si­ble from any plat­form,” Lor­raine explains. ​“It allows us to track staff train­ing; have a repos­i­to­ry for meet­ings, agen­das, min­utes; and gives staff ready access to all doc­u­ments, poli­cies, and pro­ce­dures. It enables trans­paren­cy of inci­dent report­ing, out­comes, and inves­ti­ga­tion… All these func­tions make it easy to man­age a big­ger work­force and staff.” 

Mean­while, the tran­si­tion to a Com­mu­ni­care elec­tron­ic med­ical records sys­tem, a pre­ferred sys­tem among ACCHOs for its cus­tomis­abil­i­ty and data capa­bil­i­ty, required the trans­fer of 4,500 client records across from the old Pri­ma­ry Care Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem (PCIS). ​“It was a pret­ty ambi­tious vision that the Mala’la Health Board had,” Lor­raine says, reflect­ing on the dif­fi­cul­ties oth­er organ­i­sa­tions have encoun­tered tran­si­tion­ing from PCIS.

“It was a two-year project, with Tel­stra Health, NT Health and Mala’la, to make that happen.” 

With these sys­tems in place and the health ser­vice under com­mu­ni­ty con­trol, Lor­raine feels vin­di­cat­ed in her move to the ACCHO sector.

“The best thing is the lev­el of com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment; how it empow­ers the com­mu­ni­ty, know­ing that now their health ser­vice is run by the com­mu­ni­ty; and how we’ve been able to improve and expand services.

“We’ve got a lot more involve­ment now with the Tra­di­tion­al Own­ers, and the 14 dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly groups in Maningrida.”

Lor­raine is quick to point out that you don’t need her job title to be involved in con­tin­u­ous qual­i­ty improve­ment (CQI).

“As RNs, that’s part of our role every­day – look­ing for ways we can improve,” she says. ​“A lot of peo­ple look at CQI as extra work, but when it’s done well and done prop­er­ly, it actu­al­ly improves your work sat­is­fac­tion, makes your job eas­i­er and improves outcomes.” 

Even though it’s everybody’s busi­ness, Lor­raine counts her­self as for­tu­nate to have a job with this focus. ​“I’ve always had a pas­sion for main­tain­ing stan­dards and cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where excel­lence flourishes.” 

“When going out remote, that pas­sion was ignit­ed even fur­ther because some­times there is a sense of com­pla­cen­cy – ​‘it’s remote, you can only do so much, you don’t have all the resources or equipment’.

“But there is the abil­i­ty to pro­vide excel­lence in ser­vice, and to always look to improve what we do. It can just be the lit­tle things, the one per cent changes. 

“A lot of peo­ple don’t see that because there’s a high turnover of staff in remote, but when you look back – even for me, look­ing back over 5 years’ time from when I start­ed at the Man­ingri­da Pri­ma­ry Health Ser­vice – I can see that there’s been quite sig­nif­i­cant change. 

“That’s what keeps me moti­vat­ed every day. I use an anal­o­gy with the staff if they feel a bit over­whelmed… ​“A stone is bro­ken by the last stroke of the ham­mer, but that doesn’t mean that the first stroke is useless. 

“Suc­cess is a result of con­tin­u­ous and per­sis­tent effort. Even if you may not be around to see that final stroke or out­come, you’re still part of that effort.

“While this award was award­ed to me, I think it’s also an acknowl­edg­ment of every sin­gle per­son with a pas­sion and a pur­pose in their work, striv­ing to improve out­comes every day. 

“The every­day qui­et achiev­ers often don’t feel like they’re seen or have an impact or influ­ence on what’s hap­pen­ing around them. 

“On reflec­tion on receiv­ing this award, I think that’s what it rep­re­sents – and I hope that every oth­er qui­et achiev­er that is chip­ping away at that stone will appre­ci­ate that this award is for all of them as well – and most def­i­nite­ly for my team, and the won­der­ful men­tors and teach­ers I’ve had over my career.”