“After I was approached to become a CRANAplus facil­i­ta­tor in 2012, I did 24 Mater­ni­ty Emer­gency Care cours­es, teach­ing in almost every state in Aus­tralia,” she says. 

“I thor­ough­ly enjoyed the unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to join the team of mid­wives teach­ing the MEC course to nurs­es and remote area nurs­es who work in var­i­ous clin­ics in rur­al, region­al or remote parts of Australia.

“Our enthu­si­asm and pas­sion as mid­wives must have influ­enced some of the nurs­es who said they would now con­sid­er study­ing midwifery.

“Some par­tic­i­pants also admit­ted at the begin­ning of the course they had some trep­i­da­tion in car­ing for preg­nant women but, at the con­clu­sion of the course over two and a half days, they stat­ed they felt more con­fi­dent. They had gained a lot of knowl­edge from the lec­tures and learnt many prac­ti­cal tech­niques dur­ing the skill stations.

“As facil­i­ta­tors, we use life-like mod­els to demon- strate the process to fol­low dur­ing a nor­mal birth and how to man­age var­i­ous emer­gency sit­u­a­tions e.g. a breech birth, cord pro­lapse, shoul­der dystopia and post­par­tum haemorrhage.

“The mid­wives who make up the team of facil­i­ta­tors from CRANAplus are cho­sen for their wealth of knowl­edge, skills and years of expe­ri­ence they each bring to the MEC course.

“They each work in dif­fer­ent areas of mid­wifery for exam­ple: birth suites, neona­tal inten­sive care units, emer­gency care, research, ante­na­tal clin­ics, post­na­tal wards in major met­ro­pol­i­tan hos­pi­tals, flight nurs­es or in health units in remote, rur­al or region­al areas.

“As mid­wives we know that, for most women, giv­ing birth to their baby is a nor­mal part of life. Our role is to care for women dur­ing their preg­nan­cy jour­ney and to encour­age women to attend reg­u­lar ante­na­tal checks to pre­vent pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tions for her and her unborn baby.

“The ulti­mate goal of course is for women to have a healthy preg­nan­cy and safe birth of a healthy baby and to know they are sup­port­ed by mid­wives at every stage.

“I always want­ed to be a mid­wife,” Ann says. ​“As soon as I did a mid­wifery course, I knew that was what I want­ed to do with my nursing.”

Before retir­ing, Ann spent 35 years in the Kim­ber­ley, after spend­ing three years trav­el­ling and work­ing as a nurse and nan­ny in Eng­land. She also went to Egypt and worked for five months for a UK com­pa­ny as a nurse car­ing for tourists on cruise boats trav­el­ling up and down the Nile. Before return­ing to Aus­tralia, she also spent four months vol­un­teer­ing in Israel work­ing on a kib­butz and trav­elled around Europe, Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries and Rus­sia, final­ly trekking for two weeks in Nepal.

Back in Aus­tralia, Ann worked as a reg­is­tered nurse and mid­wife at Broome Hos­pi­tal, fol­lowed by ten years as a com­mu­ni­ty mid­wife at Com­mu­ni­ty Health in Broome, and one year as a nurse edu­ca­tor for the Rheumat­ic Heart Dis­ease pro­gram (part of the Kim­ber­ley Pop­u­la­tion Health Unit in Broome).

She then worked for six years as a com­mu­ni­ty mid­wife in Halls Creek fol­lowed by six years in Der­by, vis­it­ing remote Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ties locat­ed out­side both region­al towns.
Ann says she has real­ly enjoyed her time work­ing as a nurse and mid­wife and can rec­om­mend it to any­one con­sid­er­ing it as a career.

“I con­sid­er it such a priv­i­lege to be car­ing for women and their fam­i­lies at such a spe­cial time in their lives,” she says.