“I had access to all the wards in the hos­pi­tal car­ry­ing my lit­tle trol­ley and sell­ing papers to every­one. It just felt right. And it smelled right. Peo­ple were sick but get­ting bet­ter. It real­ly felt excit­ing for me,” Josh recalls.

Work­ing as an emer­gency depart­ment (ED) nurse, Josh thought he had found his career path, but a chain of events caused him to seek a cir­cuit breaker. 

“I put an appli­ca­tion into a course and I was denied… and I thought ​‘I don’t want to live my whole life in Wollongong…’”

Adven­ture beck­oned. That adven­ture took Josh to the com­mu­ni­ty of Aurukun on the Cape York Peninsula.

“I’d nev­er heard of Aurukun, didn’t know how to spell it, didn’t know what I was get­ting into… The only First Peo­ples I prob­a­bly ever saw were on the TV…”

By day three, Josh knew he had found his calling.

“I loved it. Every aspect of it… The fact that I could use all the skills that I had built up in emer­gency… The fact that I was deal­ing with peo­ple… who I felt I could get to know on a more per­son­al lev­el… I felt that I was actu­al­ly doing some­thing that was meaningful.”

After two years, Josh became a Clin­i­cal Nurse Con­sul­tant (CNC) which gave him the pow­er to fur­ther affect change, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the pow­er of words.

“Instead of say­ing, ​‘Oh my god, it’s so busy in the clin­ic today,’ you can say, ​‘Well actu­al­ly, that’s a good thing, because peo­ple feel com­fort­able in com­ing to the clin­ic and seek­ing health care.’”

It wasn’t long after that, Josh was thrust into the Direc­tor of Nurs­ing (DON) role.

“I wasn’t very good at it in the begin­ning, if I’m hon­est. I was reac­tive… I wasn’t strate­gic. I was very oper­a­tional and I couldn’t trust peo­ple to do things the way that I would do it, so I would go and do it instead.”

But his sup­port net­work helped him find his feet and do a good job.

“I had some real­ly good men­tors… a loy­al team that helped me… I was able to learn by my mis­takes… I had the sup­port of the community.”

Then tur­bu­lence hit. An inci­dent out­side of Josh’s con­trol caused him to be side­lined from his role for 10 weeks. 

“I got a lot of time to ass­es my pri­or­i­ties and what I wanted.”

Josh decid­ed that what he want­ed was to give back to the pro­fes­sion that had giv­en him so much.

“I start­ed becom­ing more involved in… mat­ters with­in my organ­i­sa­tion and start­ed becom­ing more vocal in, how I could sup­port managers…”

Even­tu­al­ly, Josh left Aurukun to work in an over­sight and sup­port role that he had advo­cat­ed for. 12 months lat­er, he jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go remote again and took up a role in Lock­hart (Riv­er), where he has worked as the DON for the past eight years.

Josh’s path to advo­ca­cy has con­tin­ued. ​“I’ve become more involved in CRANAplus and… bring­ing to light the issues that we as remote area nurs­es face.”

When asked, what’s on the hori­zon, Josh reveals that per­haps his time in com­mu­ni­ty might be com­ing to an end.

“I’ve got no desire to climb any high­er in the man­age­ment scale. I enjoy the mix of clin­ic and man­age­r­i­al here, I love it. And it’s very impor­tant to me that I have that. I don’t want to go into an office where I work on poli­cies and pro­ce­dures all day, that’s not me.”

It was time for a sign.

“It was to the point where every time I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a fel­low nurse, they spoke about nurse prac­ti­tion­ers… A few things clicked and I looked into it and I thought, ​‘You know what, this is prob­a­bly the next step for me, this is where I want to go.’ So I enrolled in my Mas­ter of Nurse Practitioner.”

His advice for mid-career nurses?

“I worked my way through by tak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties when they presented.”

“When I felt that I was… at the end of a road, I lis­tened to my col­leagues and I lis­tened to myself and I found some­thing that sat well with me and resonated.”