“I’d left school and tried a few dif­fer­ent jobs… I thought well, maybe I’ll just give nurs­ing a crack…” 

As it turns out, she ​“absolute­ly loved it” and nev­er looked back.

Orig­i­nal­ly from the UK, where she trained as an RN, Kather­ine end­ed up work­ing in inten­sive care.

A work­ing hol­i­day in Aus­tralia left a deep impres­sion. ​“I just com­plete­ly fell in love with the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly the bush… I was absolute­ly amazed by Australia.”

She was intro­duced to First Peo­ples’ cul­ture and a par­tic­u­lar expe­ri­ence struck a chord.

“I was talk­ing to a preg­nant woman who had to leave her part­ner, her two young kids and her rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, to go and birth in a region­al setting.”

“It was some­thing I’d nev­er had to con­sid­er before… that real­i­ty of… health care in rur­al and remote Australia…”

Kather­ine went back to the UK, with the goal to return to Aus­tralia, train as a mid­wife and work in the bush. This she achieved, com­plet­ing her mid­wifery train­ing in Far North Queens­land. And then, an oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself.

While on a course, Kather­ine met a col­league from the Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tor Ser­vice (RFDS), who said, ​‘If you’re inter­est­ed, it’d be great to have your resume…’”

Kather­ine spent the next nine years work­ing in dif­fer­ent roles for the RFDS based out of Cairns.

Ini­tial­ly, the role was aeromed­ical retrieval involv­ing ​“a whole range of patient cohorts, from new­borns to the elder­ly… I’d use my mid­wifery skills as well as my ICU skills and every­thing in-between.”

Dri­ven to under­stand more about the sit­u­a­tion of those around her, Kather­ine under­took a Mas­ter of Pub­lic Health. This, in turn, caused her to step away from the aeromed­ical side of things, and turn towards Pri­ma­ry Health at RFDS.

“We saw some real­ly pos­i­tive health out­comes from the child and fam­i­ly health team… Some of the nurse mid­wives had been vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vid­ing ser­vices for years. They’d seen… babies grow into chil­dren and… these chil­dren even­tu­al­ly hav­ing their own children.”

“It was a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty at RFDS, to be involved in some great pro­grams and work with fam­i­lies and communities.”

Even­tu­al­ly, the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose to lead CRANAplus as the CEO in 2019.

And then just as Kather­ine was set­tling into the role, COVID struck.

“That was such a ter­ri­ble time for every­body… I feel very priv­i­leged to have been able to lead the organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sent RANs dur­ing that time. 

“I’d be talk­ing to peo­ple… based in Can­ber­ra, or in a met­ro­pol­i­tan area and actu­al­ly being able to describe the con­text that peo­ple were work­ing in… it was incred­i­bly pow­er­ful. Because unless you explained these things, peo­ple real­ly had no idea…”

Mov­ing on from the pan­dem­ic era, Kather­ine reflects: ​“The team achieved so many won­der­ful things dur­ing my tenure, we were pas­sion­ate about advo­cat­ing for and sup­port­ing the workforce.

“It was great to hear from RANs who’d under­tak­en CRANAplus cours­es and they’d say, ​‘I was able to use that in my prac­tice,’ or, ​‘Thank good­ness I did that course, because… I’ve had an emer­gency event and I was able to draw on all that knowledge.’

“And peo­ple say­ing that they’d used the Bush Sup­port Line and… found it incred­i­bly valuable.”

But her favourite part about being a leader: 

“It’s not all big-pic­ture… What gives me a huge amount of joy and sat­is­fac­tion is see­ing peo­ple who have pre­vi­ous­ly been in teams that I led or who I’ve worked with, who are absolute­ly kick­ing goals in their pro­fes­sion­al life now…”

“Know­ing that in some small way, you may have helped nur­ture and con­tribute to that… is so rewarding…”

And what lies ahead?

”I’ve just start­ed with the Aus­tralian Col­lege of Mid­wives as Edu­ca­tion Man­ag­er… I’m look­ing for­ward to sup­port­ing mid­wives in their practice.”

And is there ever a qui­et moment?

“I’m a ses­sion­al aca­d­e­m­ic… I’ve been doing some work with CQU (Cen­tral Queens­land Uni­ver­si­ty) and I’m going to be doing some work for JCU (James Cook Uni­ver­si­ty), and that’s fun.”

Not to men­tion, boards!

“I’m on The Queens­land Board of The Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Board of Aus­tralia… I’m also on the board of the Nurse Mid­wife Health Pro­gram Aus­tralia as a CRANAplus representative.”

Kather­ine was induct­ed as a CRANAplus Fel­low in Octo­ber at the 2024 Remote Nurs­ing & Mid­wifery Con­fer­ence in Naarm/​Melbourne.