Con­grat­u­la­tions on your Mid­wife of the Year Award! What does receiv­ing this mean to you? 

Well, first­ly, immense pride. I am pas­sion­ate about my work in women’s and mater­nal health, and, in par­tic­u­lar, the care I pro­vide to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in my community. 

I’m proud of the unique mod­el of care that I ini­ti­at­ed out of need at Gate­way Health but could not have achieved the Endorsed Mid­wife Care Pro­gram with­out support. 

There are many inno­v­a­tive mid­wives in Aus­tralia doing won­der­ful things, and I’m just one of them, so I feel very humbled. 

Could you explain your Endorsed Mid­wife Care Program? 

When I first arrived here from the north, I very quick­ly realised there was a gap in con­ti­nu­ity of mid­wife care for more vul­ner­a­ble, com­plex women. 

In the Albury/​Wodonga region, there are few pub­lic mid­wife preg­nan­cy care options. And until recent­ly, there was no pub­lic high-risk obstet­ric or med­ical clin­ic in the area either. Women were required to attend pri­vate obstet­ric care with a fee for ser­vice, and many women just can’t afford these appointments.

So, for this rea­son, vul­ner­a­ble and com­plex preg­nan­cies can end up hav­ing ad hoc or lim­it­ed preg­nan­cy care. 

The Endorsed Mid­wife Care Pro­gram has evolved into an all-risk con­ti­nu­ity of mid­wife care pro­gram for vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, in par­tic­u­lar CALD [cul­tur­al­ly and lin­guis­ti­cal­ly diverse] clients. 

The pro­gram is very well net­worked with preg­nan­cy care providers in the region, so these more com­plex women are absolute­ly linked in where they need to be linked in, but – and this is the impor­tant bit – not at the expense of miss­ing out on con­ti­nu­ity of mid­wife care. Women who have com­plex, high-risk preg­nan­cies often end up down a med­ical tra­jec­to­ry and become exempt from mid­wife care. That’s prob­a­bly the biggest thing I’m pas­sion­ate about, is that these women still have mid­wife care, despite their complexities. 

You also spent over 15 years in remote Aus­tralia – what did that jour­ney look like? 

I embarked on a trip around Aus­tralia, where I end­ed up stop­ping in Alice Springs for a year and worked in ICU, and it real­ly was this expe­ri­ence that sparked my pas­sion for remote and Abo­rig­i­nal health. 

I head­ed out to Mutitju­lu at the base of Ulu­ru where I worked as a remote area nurse. I then did a few short locums around the place. 

It was a sce­nario out bush that made me realise I real­ly need­ed to become a mid­wife. Most sce­nar­ios out bush didn’t phase me too much with my ICU and ED back­ground, but I had quite a sig­nif­i­cant obstet­ric emer­gency, and so I decid­ed it was time. 

I moved back to Vic­to­ria to do my Mid­wifery and as soon as I fin­ished, I was just des­per­ate to get back up north. I was then in the Kim­ber­ley for 11 years.

What aspects of remote health care are you most pas­sion­ate about? 

I just loved, and still love, work­ing with First Nations peo­ple. My 15 plus years of work­ing remote have been the rich­est years of my life. It was the women out bush, par­tic­u­lar­ly the women in the Kim­ber­ley — the strength and pow­er of these women — that real­ly inspired me. 

CRANAplus has been lucky to have you spend time as a Board mem­ber, vol­un­teer facil­i­ta­tor, and long­stand­ing Mem­ber since the ear­ly 2000s. What has that involve­ment been like for you? 

I remem­ber attend­ing my first CRANAplus con­fer­ence in the Blue Moun­tains where I was in awe of some of the lead­ers at the time. I just thought, ​‘Oh, I just want to be you’. 

Fair­ly soon after, I joined the Board and had a few years as a com­mit­tee mem­ber. I was still fair­ly junior in the remote world, but it was a won­der­ful learn­ing curve from a clin­i­cal gov­er­nance per­spec­tive, as well as a pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tive. And it just got me in that cir­cle of these great leaders. 

Then, of course, I became a facil­i­ta­tor for the MEC [Mater­ni­ty Emer­gency Care] and MIDUS [Mid­wifery Upskilling] cours­es. I love shar­ing my knowl­edge, par­tic­u­lar­ly on MEC, because you are deliv­er­ing that course to remote area nurs­es who are just hun­gry for this infor­ma­tion. Any­thing obstet­ric fright­ens them, and I was there, I’ve been there done that, and to be able to impart some prac­ti­cal knowl­edge is a real pleasure. 

Final­ly, what advice would you give rur­al and remote health­care pro­fes­sion­als who want to cre­ate change? 

Net­work, net­work, net­work. I love net­work­ing. I just real­ly love being around like-mind­ed health pro­fes­sion­als. They real­ly help inspire me to do what I’m doing. Align your­self with like-mind­ed peo­ple and togeth­er, as a cohort, you can do great things.