“I’m just that excit­ed,” beams RN RM Tiffany Cat­ter­mole, thrilled by the oppor­tu­ni­ty she has received to expand her skills to sup­port remote com­mu­ni­ties and improve Abo­rig­i­nal health. 

“I have 50 mil­lion ideas run­ning through my head as to where I need to be, but I’m like, 

‘You need to calm down, you haven’t even start­ed the course yet’.” 

After some time spent in Kather­ine in the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry, proud Barkind­ji woman Tiffany has returned to work in her place of birth, Wilcan­nia, a small out­back town nes­tled on the banks of the Dar­ling Riv­er in the far west of New South Wales. 

Near­by in Bro­ken Hill, she start­ed her career in health in 2009 as an admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant for Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty-con­trolled organ­i­sa­tion Maari Ma Health, where 15 years on, she now works as an out­reach mid­wife ser­vic­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Bro­ken Hill and Wilcannia.

“Posi­tions came up for an Abo­rig­i­nal Health Prac­ti­tion­er trainee­ship, I applied for that and spent 18 months in the course learn­ing clin­i­cal skills,” she says.

Ini­tial­ly, her sights had been set on direct entry mid­wifery but her path­way took a turn as she devel­oped an unex­pect­ed inter­est in wound care and found that she ​“loved the nurs­ing side of things much more than I expected.”

After com­plet­ing her nurs­ing and then mid­wifery qual­i­fi­ca­tions, she went on to work as a Mid­wifery Group Prac­tice (MGP) mid­wife in a main­stream health set­ting but has since been drawn back to a holis­tic, com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ty-con­trolled role with an empha­sis on cul­tur­al safety.

“What dri­ves me is being in Abo­rig­i­nal health,” explains Tiffany. ​“The fact that we get to real­ly know the women and the fam­i­lies we care for, and essen­tial­ly spend near­ly 12 months with these fam­i­lies – that’s what I absolute­ly love – the con­ti­nu­ity of care.”

Tiffany loves every­thing about her cur­rent work, which is fur­ther sweet­ened by many ​“baby cud­dles” and explains that she is in no rush to leave, though she does admit to hav­ing some big dreams brewing

“I would like to be able to build on what I learn in the next 12 months, and then when my kids are just a lit­tle bit old­er and moved out of home, I’d like to go remote and work out in those very, very hard to access areas – that’s where I want to be. Though, I don’t know how my part­ner feels about it yet,” she laughs

Tiffany is inspired by the expe­ri­ences of her com­mu­ni­ty and fam­i­ly as they face chal­lenges nav­i­gat­ing chron­ic ill­ness­es and access­ing appro­pri­ate healthcare.

“You sort of grow up with that whole men­tal­i­ty of ​‘Why do we have to go have these checks? There’s noth­ing wrong with us’.

“I think that’s the biggest thing that drove me, that is: ​‘Actu­al­ly no, you can get the edu­ca­tion you need to stop you from going into hos­pi­tal, or from hav­ing these con­di­tions, or pre­vent them from hap­pen­ing so ear­ly in life’.

“There’s a big stig­ma when you go to the doc­tor – [the idea that] you’re going to get noth­ing but bad news. I want to be that per­son who helps to pro­vide that edu­ca­tion, and say that going to a doc­tor isn’t such a scary thing.”

Tiffany is con­fi­dent that this schol­ar­ship will enable her to pro­vide more edu­ca­tion to fam­i­lies and par­tic­u­lar­ly moth­ers about the pre­ven­tion of chron­ic ill­ness in remote areas.

“[This schol­ar­ship] means that I can go for­ward and achieve what I want to. This is going to def­i­nite­ly give me the upper hand, I’m quite excited!”

Tiffany would like to thank Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty, CRANAplus and all those involved in mak­ing this schol­ar­ship possible.