For my final under­grad­u­ate nurs­ing place­ment, I was lucky enough to inter­view for and attain a place­ment in Bal­go through the Majar­lin Kim­ber­ley Cen­tre for Remote Health in Broome. Bal­go is a remote com­mu­ni­ty of around 400 peo­ple in the Tana­mi Desert in cen­tral WA close to the NT border. 

Although I had worked remote­ly before in the West Kim­ber­ley as an Assis­tant in Nurs­ing (AIN), the resources con­tained in a hos­pi­tal make for a far dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence than the heavy reliance on per­son­al expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of Remote Area Nurs­es (RANs) and doc­tors work­ing in remote clinics. 

The sheer com­plex­i­ty of prac­tice in this env­i­ron-ment makes me feel I could nev­er put into words elo­quent­ly enough an under­stand­ing of what it is like and the inter­nal strug­gle you feel try­ing to be a good nurse in a remote community.

I could see so many prob­lems yet none were a sim­ple fix. Abo­rig­i­nal health is mul­ti-faceted in the way that issues and social deter­mi­nants stem­ming from coloni­sa­tion com­pound each oth­er to affect health adversely.

Although I gained an enor­mous amount of clin­i­cal knowl­edge, the most valu­able part of my place­ment was the peo­ple I worked with and worked for. I was lucky to be in such a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment with a focus on teach­ing and with man­agers who tru­ly trust their RANs.

And of course, the patients make every hard thing you do, worth it. To get a ​‘thank you’ or a smile, and to be the per­son patients feel com­fort­able with makes all the dif­fer­ence in my day and reminds me why I chose to be a nurse.

The advice that has stuck with me most since fin­ish­ing the place­ment would be ​‘just do what you can’. This was the best way I found to be a good stu­dent and still be able to enjoy what I was doing.

Nurs­es can’t be every­thing to every­one. I can’t fix a sys­tem sin­gle-hand­ed­ly, but I can help in the indi­vid­ual choic­es I make to improve the health of my patients.

For me, this expe­ri­ence cement­ed my pas­sion for Indige­nous health in Aus­tralia and the impor­tance of nurs­es in remote Aus­tralia. I have the utmost admi­ra­tion for these nurs­es who are huge­ly edu­cat­ed on their patients, com­mu­ni­ties, and med­i­cine. They are some of the most inspir­ing men and women I have ever had the priv­i­lege of work­ing with.