“I was going to be a police­man,” Mark recalls, ​“but I thought, that’s pret­ty cool [nurs­ing]. So I went home and a cou­ple of weeks lat­er I applied for nurs­ing school. 

“In the 80s it still wasn’t the done thing for men. We had 10 per cent males in my class when I was hos­pi­tal trained.”

At the time, Mark was play­ing rug­by: ​“Team-mates used to joke to my oppo­si­tion, ​‘you just got out­stripped by a nurse,’ which was sup­posed to be an insult at the time. It’s a bit more accept­able these days!” Mark says.

Luck­i­ly, Mark was not put off, and many peo­ple have been the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of his career since. Be it patients in remote com­mu­ni­ties, nurs­es who come to his work­shops as a CRANAplus vol­un­teer facil­i­ta­tor or those that have expe­ri­enced his lead-by-exam­ple man­age­ment style firsthand.

Mark has held mul­ti­ple lead­er­ship posi­tions in Aus­tralia and New Zealand, includ­ing as Exec­u­tive Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the Tor­res and Cape Hos­pi­tal and Health Ser­vice for three years, includ­ing dur­ing COVID.

“We had a lot of chal­lenges up there, because we had the inter­na­tion­al bor­der with Papua New Guinea. Move­ment of peo­ples across the bor­der posed a real risk for COVID enter­ing Aus­tralia through that part of the world.”

But even whilst in lead­er­ship roles, Mark was drawn back to clin­i­cal work: ​“I can’t help myself… If there’s some­thing going down in the emer­gency depart­ment… I’m in there.

I’ve man­aged to main­tain my clin­i­cal skills even though I’ve had man­age­ment roles, by stay­ing involved.” Mark says.

When asked, what dri­ves him to do this, he says: ​“It’s so easy in man­age­ment roles to get caught up in the bureau­cra­cy, to remem­ber many years ago when you were a clin­i­cian, to believe that every­thing is fine and dandy. But get­ting out and doing some clin­i­cal shifts… gives you a real­i­ty check.”

It was his love for clin­i­cal prac­tice that drew Mark back to a clin­i­cal role, ​“I decid­ed I’d had enough of being man­ag­er again, so I came back to being a clin­i­cian and found a real­ly nice role. I work nine days on and five days off, dri­ve in, dri­ve out to Croy­don (Queens­land).

“I’ve struck the remote area nurs­es’ per­fect job with a bal­ance between being remote and doing what I love, and for my part­ner, who want­ed a home, chick­ens and a dog.”

When asked what drew him to remote nurs­ing specif­i­cal­ly, Mark says: ​“I sup­pose it was the explor­ing my full scope of prac­tice. I had an ambu­lance back­ground, which cer­tain­ly gives you a bit more scope and the insights as to how to deal with emergencies… 

“I was very much used to, as an ambu­lance offi­cer, work­ing in a very small team or on my own and deal­ing with whatever’s thrown at you. And that’s very true of where I am now.”

He admits that at times, ​“it can be a bit of an adren­a­line rush.”

And what’s on the horizon?

“I swap between man­age­ment and clin­i­cian quite often, but I’m remain­ing a clin­i­cian for the near future. Right now, I’m explor­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­take my nurse prac­ti­tion­er train­ing, part-time, over the next cou­ple of years.”

If you attend a CRANAplus course, you might just get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet Mark on the road as a vol­un­teer facil­i­ta­tor: ​“Last cal­en­dar year I did eight cours­es. I got to all parts of Aus­tralia and met lots of real­ly inter­est­ing nurs­es. I love to hear people’s stories.”

And the high­light: ​“You’ll often get repeat cus­tomers… they’ll come back a cou­ple of months lat­er and they’ll go ​‘since I did that course with you, this has hap­pened… and I used these skills that you guys taught me.’

“Get­ting that feed­back about prepar­ing peo­ple for the remote care is real­ly cool. It’s a big part of it.”

Mark was recent­ly appoint­ed as a CRANAplus Fel­low at the 2024 CRANAplus Remote Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Con­fer­ence in Naarm, for his demon­strat­ed lead­er­ship in rur­al and remote areas across South Aus­tralia, North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry, and Queens­land, includ­ing: address­ing pre­ventable dis­eases, part­ner­ing with com­mu­ni­ty, empow­er­ing local health­care work­ers, and work­ing in a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter response.