“My goal is to share the knowl­edge and skills I have obtained over the years,” says Emma, ​“and hope­ful­ly be a role mod­el for oth­er young nurs­es to realise that this lifestyle will for­ev­er change the way you nurse and care for oth­ers, in the best way possible!”

Emma has worked in sev­er­al rur­al and remote regions includ­ing Far North and cen­tral Queens­land, and the Bark­ly Region in the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry (NT). She has also spent many a long day fly­ing in to some of the most remote com­mu­ni­ties of the NT as a Flight Nurse, where there is often just a dirt strip and a few hous­es nearby.

“Work­ing in these areas has real­ly opened my eyes to the health dis­par­i­ties that we are still try­ing to man­age and reduce and the real resilience and strength of the peo­ple who live and work in these iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties,” says Emma.

Employed at CRANAplus since Feb­ru­ary this year, Emma’s role is specif­i­cal­ly to coor­di­nate the REC/AREC+ALS/TEC cours­es. Since she began with CRANAplus, she has also worked on con­tent mod­i­fi­ca­tion for the PEC+PALS course.

“I have always had a strong pas­sion for edu­ca­tion and have been con­tin­u­ous­ly com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing for­mal and infor­mal edu­ca­tion in my roles as an RN/CN so I am thrilled to be work­ing with a com­pa­ny like CRANAplus that has such a strong vision and pas­sion for pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion and upskilling the rur­al and remote workforce.

“I think when you com­mit to a nurs­ing role, you com­mit to life­long learn­ing and study – every day is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn some­thing new, to see some­thing you haven’t seen before.”

Emma’s pas­sion for edu­ca­tion began ear­ly in her career when she realised ​“the true priv­i­lege of being pro­vid­ed with qual­i­ty ongo­ing edu­ca­tion is not a given”.

Work­ing in rur­al and remote envi­ron­ments can make access­ing edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices dif­fi­cult as there is often lim­it­ed time or abil­i­ty to take days off to trav­el else­where to com­plete courses.

“That’s what has drawn me to CRANAplus,” she says. ​“We take our cours­es to the most remote cor­ners of the coun­try so health­care work­ers don’t miss out on these valu­able opportunities.”

Emma her­self first com­plet­ed a CRANAplus course in 2018 – the REC and MEC due to her real desire to jump into rur­al and remote nursing.

“I stayed on in a region­al ED and con­sol­i­dat­ed my skills until 2020 when I did my first con­tract,” she recalls.

“It was a sur­re­al change from work­ing in a busy, well-staffed depart­ment to work­ing with only one oth­er nurse and an on-call doc­tor, but I loved the rapid improve­ment in my clin­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing and scope of practice.

“I would rec­om­mend to any­one con­sid­er­ing mak­ing the leap to R&R to embrace the unique­ness of the role, and embrace the chal­lenges with an open heart and mind!”