Kylie has been facil­i­tat­ing Remote Emer­gency Care (REC), Advanced Remote Emer­gency Care (AREC), Advanced Life Sup­port (ALS) and Triage Emer­gency Care (TEC) around the coun­try since 2021, trav­el­ling to Ade­laide, Dar­win, Broome, Nhu­lun­buy and Hobart, as well as facil­i­tat­ing in Alice Springs. She says many course par­tic­i­pants take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to net­work and get advice and infor­ma­tion about inter­est­ing places to start remote nursing.

“When you think of remote nurs­ing, you think of the iso­la­tion”, says Kylie. ​“Alice Springs I believe pro­vides the per­fect bal­ance for new­com­ers to the remote nurs­ing expe­ri­ence: iso­la­tion with sup­port. You are not alone.

“The style of nurs­ing in Cen­tral Aus­tralia is vast­ly dif­fer­ent to any­thing else­where in the coun­try, con­sid­er­ing the pop­u­la­tions we have here and the vast­ness of the areas that we cov­er – down to the APY lands in the south and over to the bor­der with West­ern Australia.

“We are a big town, with a hos­pi­tal large enough to sup­port a real­ly big area, but it is still iso­lat­ed enough to give nurs­es a real­ly good foun­da­tion. It’s a step­ping stone.

“Alice Springs, in par­tic­u­lar, is suit­ed to those par­tic­i­pants who want to get a real­ly good feel for work­ing in Cen­tral Aus­tralia,” says Kylie, who has lived in Alice Springs for more than six years.

“I believe Alice Springs is a great place to get your foot in the door.

“After a few months in the Emer­gency Depart­ment, they will get con­fi­dence to branch out and go to more remote locations.”

Kylie also rec­om­mends the lifestyle in Alice Springs, and is grate­ful that her chil­dren, six in all, are hav­ing this opportunity.

“The camp­ing is ter­rif­ic, the lifestyle is relaxing.

“It does have its social prob­lems, absolute­ly, but it does not hin­der the charm of liv­ing here. Alice Springs often gets a bad rap, but I intend to stay here for a few more years.”

Kylie’s nurs­ing back­ground is in crit­i­cal care, start­ing in Can­ber­ra where she grad­u­at­ed. She spent two years in the Coro­nary Care Unit (CCU) and the rest of the decade in the Emer­gency Depart­ment, work­ing her way up to a team-lead­ing role with­in that depart­ment and then moved onto an edu­ca­tion role.

“I worked on FIFO con­tracts in far west Queens­land for a time and spent three months in Kan­da­har Air Base in Afghanistan run­ning a clin­ic for Air traf­fic con­trollers,” she says.

“I also spent a decade as an army reservist work­ing as a com­bat medic. I have com­plet­ed a para­med­i­cine post grad course and an Emer­gency Nurs­ing grad dip.

“When I moved out to Alice, I went back to the bot­tom of the pile, and worked in ED again, work­ing myself up into a ward-based edu­ca­tion role and then onto the hos­pi­tal-wide Clin­i­cal edu­ca­tion team.

“Whilst on this team I began devel­op­ing edu­ca­tion for RAN’s in Cen­tral Aus­tralia and did the REC so I knew what was about and what the RANs were learn­ing. My role now is an edu­ca­tor to the entire nurs­ing staff at Alice Springs Hospital.”

Facil­i­tat­ing with CRANAplus fits in per­fect­ly with Kylie’s career pro­gres­sion. ​“In the role as edu­ca­tor for RANs, it was sug­gest­ed it would be good for me to do the cours­es, and then that moved to being a facil­i­ta­tor on the cours­es,” she says.

“I love that shared expe­ri­ence you get on the cours­es. As a facil­i­ta­tor, you learn some­thing every time, from the par­tic­i­pants and also oth­er facilitators.

“I love to get inspi­ra­tion and ideas from oth­ers and mod­el my nurs­ing on things I learn from them.

“And the pos­i­tive feed­back from par­tic­i­pants is always a wel­come part of the role.”