Hooked on coun­try liv­ing, Danielle’s base out­side of Townsville pays homage to her farm upbring­ing in New South Wales, com­plete with sheep, chooks, cats and dogs. 

“We couldn’t bring our­selves to actu­al­ly be liv­ing in town, we need­ed head­space and [phys­i­cal] space for our fam­i­ly as well,” says Danielle.

In her role for Cen­tral West Queens­land, Danielle’s work cov­ers 23 per cent of Queensland’s land­mass where just three per cent of the state’s pop­u­la­tion resides. 

Con­nect­ing into three Hos­pi­tal and Health Ser­vices (HHSs), the Cen­tral West region faces unique chal­lenges – from dis­tance and time pres­sures to road clo­sures and bring­ing in air support.

“In the south­ern part, our patient path­way goes to the Dar­ling Downs into Toowoom­ba and Bris­bane; Lon­greach into the Cen­tral Area we’ll go to Bris­bane or to Rock­hamp­ton; our North West­ern side will go up to Mount Isa, or through to Townsville,” says Danielle. 

“We have to be con­nect­ed and work across sev­er­al dif­fer­ent HHSs… to sus­tain patient focused care, we have to be open to var­i­ous dif­fer­ent paths.”

Qual­i­fi­ca­tions

As part of her role with Cen­tral West Queens­land, Danielle is also an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor at James Cook Uni­ver­si­ty. Her cre­den­tials include a Mas­ter of Nurs­ing, along with qual­i­fi­ca­tions and expe­ri­ence in clin­i­cal edu­ca­tion, gen­er­al prac­tice man­age­ment and project management. 

Danielle was also the first nurse on the Queens­land Hos­pi­tal and Health Ser­vice boards and part of the sub-com­mit­tee for safe­ty and qual­i­ty rep­re­sent­ing the West­ern Downs.

“As the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Nurs­ing [Cen­tral West Queens­land], [gov­er­nance is]… part of my role, and in my pre­vi­ous role I was the Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Gov­er­nance for the Cen­tral West,” says Danielle. 

When she’s not work­ing, Danielle vol­un­teers her time to share the sto­ries of rur­al and remote nurs­es and mid­wives through her pas­sion project ​‘A Nurse Out Where’ podcast. 

“I thought we real­ly need to start shar­ing these sto­ries and get­ting the voice out there because rur­al and remote nurs­es are a spe­cial­ty in their own right, and I think we real­ly need to cel­e­brate that,” she says. 

“I want to be able to acknowl­edge that [work­ing in iso­lat­ed areas] is hard, it’s not easy, and it’s not for every­body… but you don’t know unless you try. And if you don’t hear about it, you don’t think about it.” 

Why remote?

Danielle describes her long­stand­ing love for remote health­care as an equal split between head and heart. 

“My head tells me pro­fes­sion­al­ly that it’s about the auton­o­my, it’s about the abil­i­ty to real­ly work at the top of your scope,” she says, ​“and to chal­lenge myself pro­fes­sion­al­ly to be able to do those things. 

“But my heart tells me it’s the com­mu­ni­ty… I love get­ting involved in all the com­mu­ni­ty events and under­stand­ing the culture.”

On being on the Board 

When asked about her new posi­tion on the CRANAplus Board, Danielle expressed grat­i­tude and pride to be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty and said she is look­ing for­ward to return­ing the support. 

“Rur­al and remote is my pas­sion and I’ll be there for [CRANAplus mem­bers] as much as they’ve been there for me,” she says.