Thanks for join­ing us, Dalya. Can you tell us about your jour­ney to becom­ing a nurse educator? 

When help­ing to start a new hos­pi­tal, I quick­ly realised that I loved edu­cat­ing. It took a while before I suc­cess­ful­ly applied for a CNE role – you’re not always going to be suc­cess­ful the first time you step out your com­fort zone.

When I did become a CNE, I sought to devel­op myself to be a bet­ter edu­ca­tor. I looked at how to be a Nurse Edu­ca­tor (NSW Health has CNE, NE 1, NE 2, and NE 3 levels).

I stud­ied a post-grad­u­ate degree through Uni­ver­si­ty of New Eng­land in train­ing and devel­op­ment. The devel­op­ment side helped me with man­ag­ing per­for­mance, which ends up in an educator’s buck­et. Dur­ing this study I was suc­cess­ful in a Nurse Edu­ca­tor role, and quick­ly devel­oped cours­es that were miss­ing, and pod­casts.

I fin­ished my study and received real­ly good results – I think this gave me the con­fi­dence to extend myself again into a NE 2 role, which put me back into crit­i­cal care.

Work­ing at a major ter­tiary hos­pi­tal again made me look at edu­ca­tion dif­fer­ent­ly.
Dur­ing my time there I pushed for change and the devel­op­ment of nurs­es through col­lab­o­ra­tive approach­es with med­ical and spe­cial­i­ty staff. I was there dur­ing COVID which trig­gered me and my fam­i­ly to say, ​“Let’s get out of Sydney”.

The role of Dis­trict Nurse Edu­ca­tor, which is a grade 3 NE, was avail­able – again, it took a few goes, but when the role for Mur­rumbidgee Local Health Dis­trict (MHLD) came up, I was ulti­mate­ly suc­cess­ful. Then it was time to move my whole fam­i­ly, the dog and five chickens.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on your growth as an edu­ca­tor. What’s it like to nurse in the Riverina?

At MLHD, we take a car­ing and sup­port­ive direc­tion when it comes to devel­op­ing our nurs­es and mid­wives. You can nurse in two very busy hos­pi­tals and see every­thing you will see at a big metro site. At the mul­ti-pur­pose ser­vice and dis­trict hos­pi­tal sites you become a spe­cial­ist nurse in everything.

We had a great adver­tis­ing cam­paign that you may have seen which includes pic­tures of cows, lla­mas, and emus and how these ani­mals have caused injuries which you will see and treat patients for.

We have a rov­ing clin­i­cal nurse edu­ca­tor (CNE) mod­el for ear­ly career nurse sup­port and devel­op­ment, which means that at whichev­er site you work, you will always have education.

MLHD has also devel­oped a Vir­tu­al Nurse Assist Mod­el where you can call a CNE for any­thing at any time for sup­port and guid­ance through patient care, assess­ment, and treatment.

We have a young dis­trict with many young fam­i­lies. There is a lot of farm­ing, canola – it looks beau­ti­ful trav­el­ling around and see­ing emus run through the fields.

We have a huge focus on pre­serv­ing nature includ­ing our koala pop­u­la­tion at Narrandera.

It sounds like a love­ly place to work. Since head­ing rur­al, why have you decid­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the CRANAplus Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Round­table? Do all nurs­es have a role to play in advocacy?

I have realised that we need to speak up more for equi­table access to health and health­care edu­ca­tion. As part of the Round­table, we can influ­ence some great col­lab­o­ra­tion and the devel­op­ment of nurs­es, mid­wives, and allied health in rur­al and remote.

All nurs­es need to remind them­selves of their ​‘why’ and their com­mit­ment to mak­ing our lives bet­ter through bet­ter patient expe­ri­ences in healthcare.

As a Nurse Edu­ca­tor, how do you iden­ti­fy the workforce’s learn­ing needs?

Inci­dents, seri­ous adverse event reviews (SAERs), learn­ing needs analy­sis, speak­ing with staff, vis­it­ing sites, patient and fam­i­ly feed­back, and some­time gov­ern­ment rec­om­men­da­tions. Even glob­al meet­ings like Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Nurs­es, or con­fer­ences too.

At the 2022 CRANAplus Con­fer­ence, you pre­sent­ed on this rov­ing CNE mod­el. How suc­cess­ful has this been?

There has been a sig­nif­i­cant increase in train­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion. Our new grad­u­ate num­bers have increased, and we have been able to do that through pro­vid­ing an edu­ca­tor to come out and work with them.

We’ve got 33 sites, and the rov­ing mod­el con­tributes to con­nec­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between them.

Speak­ing on a nation­al lev­el now, what solu­tions do you think could bring about a larg­er, bet­ter pre­pared workforce?

The pro­mo­tion of nurs­ing as a pos­i­tive job. We need to remove the neg­a­tive media and remind our­selves about the good things we can do. It’s a real­ly good job to have, real­ly stable.

We’ve got mul­ti­ple path­ways, we can become Nurse Prac­ti­tion­ers. We can achieve so much in nurs­ing.
A rethink of the fund­ing mod­el from the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment would be great. Doc­tors are not the solu­tion to a lot of work­force sup­ply and nurs­es and mid­wives need to be able to work at the top of their scope.

Our uni­ver­si­ties could do more to pro­duce work-ready grad­u­ates and to instil an under-stand­ing of the role and its respon­si­bil­i­ties. We need a four-year degree, nurse and mid­wife intern­ships where we are super­nu­mer­ary, and to be giv­en Train­ing Edu­ca­tion Study Leave (TESL) as in the med­ical field, so we can
afford to con­tin­ue our education.

As an edu­ca­tor, what are your thoughts on learn­ing on the job, ver­sus bring­ing your skills with you to the role?

Well, that’s a curly one, as right now our junior work­force does not always enter the work­force with ful­ly-fledged skills in nurs­ing but will look at things dif­fer­ent­ly and want ​‘express’ pathways.

Of course, you have to learn on the job. It’s hard to teach expe­ri­ence, and you can’t be an expert after six months.

But we’ve got to coun­ter­bal­ance that – we need peo­ple to be per­form­ing at the top of their scope ear­li­er. This has been weigh­ing on my thoughts as an edu­ca­tor late­ly, and I don’t have the answer. Except to say that we can edu­cate you to be the best in what­ev­er you decide to do, just as long as you stay in nurs­ing and mid­wifery.

What else can nurs­es do to sup­port under­grad­u­ates and recent graduates?

Nurs­es need to nur­ture all our work­force, includ­ing our col­leagues in allied health and med­ical. We need to work and train togeth­er. There are great ini­tia­tives like at John Hop­kins Hos­pi­tal where all the nurs­es, phys­ios and doc­tors attend the same ori­en­ta­tion – how amaz­ing would that be?

All nurs­es have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to encour­age oth­ers to be nurs­es, and no mat­ter what our day entails, we need to remem­ber our ​‘why’ and how this will bring about a bet­ter patient experience.