Our 2024 conference website is now live.
Find out more about this year's event.
Contact Us Dashboard Cart

Your Stories

This is where we tell your stories, cover topical issues and promote meaningful initiatives.

Becoming a remote area nurse – a new module

14 Aug 2023

If you are interested in working as a remote area nurse or midwife, but uncertain how to get started, you may want to check out our new free reflective online module, ‘Becoming a remote area nurse: essential knowledge’. It’s proven highly popular since its release in May.

Becomingaran4
Becomingaran3
Becomingaran2

When nurs­es and mid­wives are pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion and sup­port dur­ing their tran­si­tion to remote prac­tice, they find that a high­ly reward­ing, even life-chang­ing career awaits them as a remote area health professional. 

The reverse is also true; when infor­ma­tion or sup­port is hard to come by, nurs­es and mid­wives may be deterred from an excit­ing career shift, before or soon after get­ting started.

To help aspir­ing remote area nurs­es and mid­wives to assess their readi­ness and make the career shift con­fi­dent­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly, CRANAplus has devel­oped an online mod­ule titled ​‘Becom­ing a remote area nurse: essen­tial knowledge’. 

The mod­ule address­es many of the ques­tions we are com­mon­ly asked, with an eye to sup­port­ing work­force sustainability.

This reflec­tive mod­ule chal­lenges com­mon assump­tions about remote area nurs­ing, intro­duces help­ful pro grams to sup­port path­way and career plan­ning, and pro vides the essen­tial knowl­edge required to thrive in remote health prac­tice. It includes infor­ma­tion that expe­ri­enced RANs wish they knew when they start­ed out and helps to paint a clear­er pic­ture of the real­i­ty of remote health work, includ­ing the broad­er scope of prac­tice and autonomy.

It’s been designed for:

  • Nurs­ing and mid­wifery students
  • Nurs­es and mid­wives at any career stage con­sid­er­ing tran­si­tion­ing to rur­al or remote area practice
  • Nurs­es and mid­wives con­sid­er­ing or under tak­ing short-term agency con­tracts in rur­al or remote areas.

CRANAplus acknowl­edges the valu­able con­tri­bu­tions of mem­bers who have gen­er­ous­ly offered their exper­tise, expe­ri­ences and advice in devel­op­ing and review­ing this resource. We would par­tic­u­lar­ly like to thank CRANAplus Fel­lows, Kylie McCul­lough and Lyn Byers.

Expec­ta­tions ver­sus reality

Below, we fact-check a few com­mon assump­tions about work­ing in remote prac­tice. This con­tent is tak­en from the module. 

“Remote com­mu­ni­ties are small and the work­load will be less stress­ful.”
The pop­u­la­tion of remote com­mu­ni­ties can fluc­tu­ate, and the health needs are gen­er­al­ly greater. At times and in some loca­tions always, you will expe­ri­ence long work­ing and on-call hours.

“Work­ing in a remote area is a chance to get away from the pol­i­tics of acute, ter­tiary set­tings.”
Col­lab­o­ra­tion with health­care providers is even more impor­tant in remote set­tings! You will like­ly work with an even more diverse team who may be on site with you every day, vis­it reg­u­lar­ly or be work­ing remote­ly. You will also be work­ing with oth­er ser­vice providers and the com­mu­ni­ty. Wher­ev­er there are peo­ple, there are politics!

“I have emer­gency man­age­ment expe­ri­ence and will extend my emer­gency skills in a remote area set­ting.”
Your skills will be help­ful to you. How­ev­er, this will be a small com­po­nent of remote area work and every area of your prac­tice will be extended.

“I loved my hol­i­day and now I am look­ing for a sea/​desert/​tropical/​tree change.”
Hol­i­days can inspire! Real life is not always the same. Ensure you pre­pare for work­ing in the remote set­ting and man­age your expectations.

“I’m keen to help fix the health prob­lems of those liv­ing in remote areas.”
Remote com­mu­ni­ties are resilient. As a remote health pro­fes­sion­al you can sup­port health in the com­mu­ni­ty. Reflect on how you can col­lab­o­rate with the com­mu­ni­ty to reach their health goals and fur­ther empow­er the community.

“I am burned out and I do not want the shift work lifestyle any­more.”
You may or may not have ​‘shifts’ depend­ing on where you work, but you are very like­ly to have on-call require­ments. There­fore, at times you are like­ly to work very long hours with sig­nif­i­cant pressure.

If you’re inter­est­ed in work­ing in remote health, now or in the future, we encour­age you to access the Becom­ing a remote area nurse: essen­tial knowl­edge module.