Tell us a bit about your role in Halls Creek. How was it dif­fer­ent to your work on Mamu Country/​Cassowary Coast? In terms of remote­ness, geog­ra­phy, skills, work­load, peo­ple, et cetera?

Whilst my back­ground is in pri­ma­ry health care (PHC), specif­i­cal­ly work­ing in Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander health in a rur­al set­ting and in two out­reach towns, Babin­da and Tul­ly, as a new reg­is­tered nurse to rur­al and remote nurs­ing, my RAN career path­way need­ed ED exposure.

For­tu­nate­ly, my extreme­ly sup­port­ive agent lis­tened and under­stood my career path­way to becom­ing a RAN. He sup­port­ed this by acknowl­edg­ing my back­ground in Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander PHC, pre­dom­i­nant­ly work­ing in a rur­al set­ting, and tran­si­tioned me into the very small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Halls Creek, sit­u­at­ed in the beau­ti­ful Kim­ber­ley region of West­ern Australia.

The Halls Creek Hos­pi­tal is a mul­ti­pur­pose cen­tre with a three-bed emer­gency depart­ment, an eight-bed gen­er­al ward, and a pri­ma­ry health­care doc­tor and nurse avail­able Mon­day to Fri­day. The Direc­tor of Nurs­ing, Clin­i­cal Nurse Coor­di­na­tor, doc­tors, nurs­es, and para­medics pro­vid­ed me with a pos­i­tive, sup­port­ive learn­ing envi­ron­ment to build on my skills as a new RAN, help­ing me gain essen­tial emer­gency depart­ment skills to fur­ther my remote area nurse career.

Work­ing in a hos­pi­tal envi­ron­ment and deal­ing with shift work was a reward­ing challenge.

I was exposed to morn­ing, after­noon, and night shifts, as well as on-call duties. My PHC eyes were opened to a new world of mon­i­tor­ing high-risk, dete­ri­o­rat­ing patients requir­ing Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tor Ser­vice trans­fers out to Broome, Kununur­ra, and Perth. I was active­ly involved in men­tal health emer­gen­cies and gained fun­da­men­tal insight and hands-on expe­ri­ence in recog­nis­ing and act­ing quick­ly on dete­ri­o­rat­ing adult and pae­di­atric patients.

My scope of prac­tice has widened in the most sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment, allow­ing me to progress in my jour­ney as an upcom­ing RAN.

What was the most reward­ing expe­ri­ence in Halls Creek?

Inter­act­ing and get­ting to know the First Nations peo­ple of the Halls Creek com­mu­ni­ty. I have enjoyed shar­ing the laugh­ing times, hap­py times, and sad times of those who walked through the hos­pi­tal doors.

This expe­ri­ence has helped me feel alive in my own Abo­rig­i­nal­i­ty, pur­su­ing my jour­ney of under­stand­ing who I am and where I come from as a First Nations Noongar.

You have built your pri­ma­ry health­care skill set through expe­ri­ence and train­ing. How did these ben­e­fit you in Halls Creek? Were there any ​‘a‑ha’ moments when you were able to draw on the skills you had learned?

I used to smile and laugh a lot when I had an ​‘a‑ha’ moment. The ​‘I get it’, and high-five moments among myself and oth­ers’ ​‘a‑ha’ moments were an every­day occur­rence work­ing with clin­i­cians at all dif­fer­ent lev­els of experience.

The great­ness of being new on my jour­ney to remote area nurs­ing is you nev­er stop learn­ing on the job – it’s an excit­ing adventure!

In life, it’s so easy to ignore advice and only believe some­thing after you’ve expe­ri­enced it first­hand (i.e. ​‘learn through mis­takes’). What con­vinced you to take your time with your tran­si­tion to remote?

First Nations people’s holis­tic health is extreme­ly com­plex. The more remote my career becomes, the more com­plex holis­tic health issues will be present. As First Nations health pro­fes­sion­als, we under­stand and have lived expe­ri­ence with the deter­mi­nants of health and first­hand knowl­edge of how these direct­ly and neg­a­tive­ly influ­ence our people’s health­care jour­neys. As a reg­is­tered nurse, I need to be at my best for my peo­ple. I need to start from the begin­ning and work my way up so I can be there for them when they need me most.

What chal­lenges have you encoun­tered on your jour­ney to get­ting remote and how have you over­come them?

Acknowl­edg­ing and under­stand­ing that you don’t just walk into remote area nurs­ing, it is a work in progress for a rea­son – it is a spe­cial­ty in its own right and a pro­gres­sive one. Remote area nurs­ing is not for every­one. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the ugli­ness due to the lack of knowl­edge and aware­ness regard­ing First Nations peo­ple is preva­lent. The true hard facts need to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed about the issues that First Nations pro­fes­sion­als and com­mu­ni­ties encounter in their pro­fes­sion­al and dai­ly lives, both past and present.

I over­come this by advo­cat­ing for myself and my peo­ple, as I have always done through­out my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life.

Do you have any advice for fel­low nurs­es or stu­dents out there who might be con­sid­er­ing remote health as a career option?

Get out there and do it, you will nev­er look back!

First and fore­most, it is essen­tial to edu­cate your­self on the his­to­ry of First Nations peo­ple. Don’t just read it, under­stand it!

I rec­om­mend hav­ing face-to-face cul­tur­al aware­ness train­ing, as online train­ing will nev­er do you the same jus­tice.

Access CRANAplus’ Becom­ing a remote area nurse: essen­tial knowl­edge free online mod­ule, and start with a tran­si­tion-to-remote nurs­ing pro­gram. On the CRANAplus web­site, you can also find help­ful resources and infor­ma­tion about path­way incen­tives.

If you are more expe­ri­enced, get your PHC skills up, be proac­tive, and net­work, net­work, net­work!

Nev­er make it about the mon­ey, take every oppor­tu­ni­ty to do it for the First Nations peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties that you work for because every sin­gle day is worth it and they will remem­ber who helped them when they need­ed some­one the most.

What’s next for you?

To con­tin­ue on my jour­ney to a remote area nurse career – it is all one hun­dred per cent worth it.