Suc­ces­sion plan­ning in remote can be tricky, most­ly because the turnover of remote area staff in all posi­tions can be high, so nur­tur­ing some­one to fol­low you may take some time to become a real­i­ty. This can be com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that the work­load can be so over­whelm­ing that it’s dif­fi­cult actu­al­ly to bed down what the role entails.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, man­agers and lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in remote areas, fell into roles because they had been in the clin­ic for the longest peri­od of time. Or they moved up the lad­der because they were the best clin­i­cian, or alter­na­tive­ly, they took on the role because there was no one else.

Occa­sion­al­ly nurs­es have actu­al­ly been groomed for the role ahead of them. 

The key ele­ments to effec­tive suc­ces­sion plan­ning, as I see them, include but are not lim­it­ed to:

• Know­ing what the role is. Often, our work is so diverse and wide­spread or has grown to such an extent that it can be dif­fi­cult to actu­al­ly under­stand what the role is or the type of per­son that is need­ed. This should be dis­cussed with oth­er man­agers or peers. Oth­ers often have a dif­fer­ent view of the job that is to be done.
• Iden­ti­fy­ing tal­ent. There are always peo­ple who seem to shine from the first day, they step up and assume respon­si­bil­i­ty, and while they may say they don’t want to be a leader or man­ag­er, with the prop­er sup­port, they will often step up.
• Pro­vid­ing sup­port and devel­op­ment and giv­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and encour­age­ment. There are a lot of poten­tial man­agers who have been dis­ap­point­ed by a lack of sup­port and encouragement.
• Pro­vid­ing hon­est feed­back and men­tor­ing. Work side by side for a peri­od of time, answer ques­tions and be pre­pared to share information.
• Step­ping back. When hand­ing over the job, it’s impor­tant actu­al­ly to step back and let your suc­ces­sor do the job.

Les­ley Woolf
OAM, RN, RM, FCRANA+

Suc­ces­sion plan­ning in poor­ly resourced remote set­tings with a high­ly tran­sient health work­force is chal­leng­ing but essential.

Effec­tive suc­ces­sion plan­ning involves iden­ti­fy­ing crit­i­cal roles, cross-train­ing staff, and fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of knowl­edge shar­ing. This ensures con­ti­nu­ity of care, min­imis­es dis­rup­tion and enables unex­pect­ed changes to be accommodated.

A core tenet of remote area nurs­ing is knowl­edge shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Every remote area nurse can share some knowl­edge to sup­port incom­ing nurs­es or local Abo­rig­i­nal Health Prac­ti­tion­ers to grow and develop.

Suc­ces­sion plan­ning can be as sim­ple as mak­ing sure the incom­ing nurse knows how to nav­i­gate the tele­health sys­tem so patients can still access vir­tu­al out­pa­tient appointments. 

Suc­ces­sion plan­ning involves teach­ing col­leagues how the order­ing sys­tem works so phar­ma­cy, gen­er­al stores, and pathol­o­gy sup­plies arrive in a time­ly man­ner and aren’t reliant on the long-term staff mem­ber. These essen­tial remote clin­ic tasks are often over­looked in the pres­sure to pro­vide best prac­tice clin­i­cal care for com­plex con­di­tions and the stress of fill­ing the dai­ly on-call ros­ter. Incom­ing staff can be proac­tive in offer­ing to learn new roles and shar­ing knowledge.

Lyn Byers
RN, RM, NP, FCRANA+

There are lots of chal­lenges, some relat­ed to the increas­ing pref­er­ence for FIFO/DIDO and locum con­tracts, oth­ers relat­ed to the spe­cial­ist gen­er­al­ist nature of our roles.

I would describe myself as a ​‘stay­er’. I tend to work for long peri­ods of time with one par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty or one organ­i­sa­tion, which enables the devel­op­ment of a depth of knowl­edge and under­stand­ing about sys­tems and process­es, the local pop­u­la­tion health pro­file and key needs, but also the devel­op­ment of long-term ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ships with clients.

The strate­gies I use in terms of pass­ing on this knowl­edge and exper­tise I put in two buck­ets: the joy­ful ones and the mun­dane ones.

Joy­ful strate­gies include think­ing about the whole pipeline and where are the areas
I can influ­ence the growth and devel­op­ment of a remote and rur­al health work­force with spe­cial­ist gen­er­al­ist skills – not just for nurs­ing but all health pro­fes­sions, from school stu­dents through to the col­leagues in my workplace.

I look for ways to open doors, con­nect oth­ers or sup­port learn­ing expe­ri­ences for those around me or those I know are inter­est­ed in rur­al and remote health. I think about the ways I can pro­mote the ben­e­fits of longer-term com­mit­ment (years vs months) to a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty or organisation.

Often it’s the lit­tle things, nudg­ing some­one to fol­low an area of inter­est, giv­ing oth­ers
the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be involved in more deci­sion-mak­ing, encour­ag­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for team mem­bers to advo­cate inter­nal­ly or exter­nal­ly on issues that mat­ter to them and sup­port­ing them when they do.

Those that fall into the mun­dane buck­et include ensur­ing that sys­tems and process­es are appro­pri­ate, clear­ly doc­u­ment­ed, com­mu­ni­cat­ed and under­stood. It is mun­dane and slow but impor­tant work because strong sys­tems and sup­ports cre­ate the safe foun­da­tions that learn­ing and shar­ing can grow from.

Katie Pen­ning­ton
RN, FCRANA+