If you're not loving it, if there's not something in the role that's giving you joy, just go knock on another door.

There is an absolute workforce shortage. There is no reason not to tap into every opportunity, you know, have a crack. If you go with the casual, you've got the luxury of. Of, shopping around or as an agency nurse, you've got the option to do that. So, you know, I don't regret any part of my little nursing career.

And here I am, the subtotal of all of that .

Hello and welcome back to the High Performance Nursing Podcast. I am so excited that you are here today. We have an incredible guest. close nursing peer, all the way from the Bilton Simic, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

I am fabulous and you know, given the time we've taken to actually get on screen together, I think it's pretty spectacular

You'll see on, I don't know if anyone can see, but I've actually got Rachel from Nawal Land and you're all probably thinking what earth that is that where the ops live? No, it isn't. So Australia, as you know, is a colonized country and the a c t is the territory that houses Canberra, which. Unlike, a lot of people think Sydney's the capital of Australia, Canberra's the centre of Australia.

And Australia pre colonisation was divided up into up to 650 areas, all based on our First Peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of this country. So, I've made a point of putting Ngunnawal land, because in this country, we are getting better at acknowledging our First Peoples. And who am I and why would you possibly think I'm exciting?

I've got a great voice for radio. So if you are looking up my nose I just explained to Liam, I want it to be authentic, but I was hoping to wear a little bit more makeup than I am today. But anyway, I started my nursing journey. Thank you. I actually started my nursing journey probably before many of you were born.

So I actually started my nursing journey in 1985. I had just graduated from what is sixth form, I guess, in most countries. And I was faced with what most of us are faced with, what should we do? I got into uni, but there was some financial constraints around that. I got into the Navy. which I still laugh at.

And I got into nursing. Now I got into nursing on a Tuesday and I got into the Navy on Wednesday. As it turned out, nursing meant that I would stay in the Canberra and I actually had a boyfriend time. So if you're out there and you do things because of your boyfriend or your girlfriend. Hello.

That's me. So I stayed in Canberra. I was very lucky. I believe I was very lucky because I actually did the second last hospital based training in and it meant that yes, we were educated in the classroom as you all are at university, but it also meant that we got to spend time in two hospitals across Canberra.

One was. called Royal Canberra and had a paediatric unit and a few other things that were unique to that hospital. And then of course, the Canberra Hospital was in those days, Woden Valley. And it had other services like mental health and rehab. So we were very lucky we got to experience two hospitals, two different kind of environments.

But we had the safety and I think probably more camaraderie than many of you probably get to have at university. In that we were a bunch of people, we were all the same age predominantly female. We were living on hospital grounds, so we had subsidised accommodation you know, basically cafeteria food.

We were getting paid less than the dole or the unemployment benefits, but at the same time it was very immersive. And I think that immersion certainly for me, I joined nursing two weeks before my 18th birthday. And so I think it was so immersive, it actually moulded some of my personality.

There are things about me that are innately grown out of that space. Towards the end of the three year hospital training, I'd been ill at some point and I had to do some make up time. That's not time putting make up on. That was time doing external. And I chose to go to the oncology ward, which of course all my friends thought I was bonkers, but I was fascinated.

I was fascinated by this amazing disease and the treatments. So of course, back in the eighties were pretty rudimentary. While I was in that oncology ward, I actually met some people who later on in my career became my, my colleagues. But what I also saw was some pretty unmanaged deaths. I saw death and dying in ways that didn't feel right.

It felt like we could be doing more. In fact, I have to honestly say, because we didn't have debriefing, we didn't talk about self care, we didn't consider that the events that we were participating in were traumatic. I finished my training on a bit of a low note. I can go back into a hospital again. It's a horrible place.

So I actually went and worked in a... Pharmacist. That was cool, you know, still people, still, and it was interesting. But at the same time, I knew that I wanted to go back into the hospital setting. I just didn't know what I wanted to do. When I was growing up, there wasn't new grad , program. So I sort of created my own as many of us did.

We joined nursing agencies. And I'd set off around the countryside, I decided I needed to see something other than Canberra. I was probably bored with my boyfriend, if the truth be known. And off I went to Melbourne and I signed up with an agency and I had such a wealth of experiences. They were terrifying, I was thrown in the deep end, I often didn't know really if I was doing any good.

But I didn't get into trouble, that was good. And I was also able, I found myself able to advocate for myself when I was being asked to do things that were either dodgy or illegal. And you know, I kind of realised that there was a nobility in having this registration and that registration meant something to me and I wasn't going to let other people put me in situations where I didn't feel safe.

I, inevitably, because I am a bit of an oddball, I ended up doing a whole string of work at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. And I ended up in the basement, as you do. I ended up in the basement with the patients back then nobody knew what to do with. So these were young, often adolescents, they had cystic fibrosis.

They had anorexia nervosa, which is, you know, is an eating disorder. And they really didn't know what to do with these young people. These illnesses were chronic. They weren't making much progress. And so this sort of chronic ward was created in the basement. And of course, I did night shift because I was young in those days.

And I figured you might as well work as you're going to party. So I had a bit of fun. I worked with some amazing nurses who were incredibly patient, I think, with the, you know, agency nurse. And I had a whole range of experiences. I had nurses who were really inclusive and were really happy to explain things.

But I also worked in places where people wouldn't even tell me where the Met Trolley was, let alone the toilet. So I learnt very quickly, in a strange place, there were some key things I needed to know. I needed to know where the toilet was. But I particularly needed to know where the metroli was, the oxygen, the medication, and all of those sorts of things.

So I became quite proficient at kind of asking for what I needed. But also at the same time, not being too much of a scaredy cat that I didn't get in there and kind of get my feet wet. So I did some agency nursing for a while. Australia is a huge country. And back then, each it's a federation.

So there's different states and different territories. And so different rules apply to different parts of the country. So I ended up in Western Australia, which back then had been golden staff free. So basically anyone who was coming from the east had to demonstrate that they were golden staff free and it took about three months.

Well, I couldn't be, I couldn't be bothered really. It was a lot of paperwork. So I went and worked in a, I think, where did I work? Oh, I worked in a hotel or something. Anyway. I flew back to central Australia, sort of bummed my way back to Melbourne. By this time I had a huge credit card bill and there's only one thing that's good for a credit card bill.

And that's not Judy. So I signed up with the agency. I signed up with the agency. I had these, at this point I'd phoned a friend. She had a car. I had somewhere to stay and a job. So, you know, so we worked in all kinds of places. And the agency were very good. They would send us as a pair.

And one of the moments I do remember is there were some old kind of hospitals in Melbourne and they're very Victorian. So there's, you know, great corridors with beds. I don't know if they're still like that. And of course the whole floor was divided into left and right and there were glass doors.

And I went up to my glass door and opened it because all of the staff had gone on meal break and I was it. And so I had my 15 patients. And at the same time, my friend had come scurrying up the other corridor. I opened the glass and went, oh shit, I'm on my own too. And suddenly we realised two young women were actually in charge of this entire corridor.

I did tell the patients none of them were allowed to have a cardiac event. And if anyone needed to poo, they had to wait till the others got back. Which went, the patients thought that was hilarious. As you know, often the desire to defecate precedes the cardiac event. So, it wasn't my aversion to poo, it was just, I didn't want to deal with that.

Anyway, I made my way back to Canberra and I actually thought, you know what, I I want to see what nurses do outside of hospitals. And I took, in the beginning, it was a pretty dull job. It was actually as an occupational health nurse at the local kind of You know, education, polytechnic, whatever you want to call it.

It was boring as what not. And I, I'd been employed because this particular campus had all the, all apprentice mechanics. And there'd been a fatal incident. And somehow they thought having a nurse on the campus would stop a fatal incident. Worry isn't it? Anyway, so I realized that the acute, you know, thing that they were looking for was a bit silly because there was a hospital around the corner and triple zero and they could definitely do a lot better job than I could.

So I actually reworked the job and I started to do a lot of health promotion. A lot of these apprentices were 16. They had no idea about Sexually transmitted diseases. They had no idea about how to clean their bum. They were all getting tonsillitis. There was lots of young women who this was their first time out of school and were feeling very uncomfortable with their, you know, various bodily functions.

We also had a cohort of students who had special needs. And in those days there wasn't really much support for them, so the staff didn't know how to deal with a epileptic seizure, for example. And I started to overlap into all sorts of things. I learned how to do hearing tests, I learned how to do, I did blood pressure monitoring, did lots of health promotion, eating healthy days, all sorts of things.

And I think it, I didn't realise it at the time, but that was actually quite progressive. Because my, the next person that came along kind of went back to just handing out Panadol and tampons. Which I would think would be very dumb. Anyway, I lasted a wee while there. Now what did I do then? Oh, then I decided to run away to Tasmania.

There was some personal stuff there but anyway. Ran away to Tasmania. I took up a job at the Launceston General and I was a bit of a dog's body for a while. Always a great place to start at a hospital by the way. Join the casual pool because you can go and have a bit of a sticky beak. You can look at the equipment, you can get a feel for the staff, you can get a vibe for the kind of nursing that you're doing.

And me of course being an oddball, I ended up in the voluntary sonic ward. where I could get my medication for free. No, I'm kidding. It was a wonderful, it was a wonderful space and the camaraderie, I think that's what got me there was, yes, I'm fascinated with mental health nursing, but the nurses there were obviously very progressive and really trying to think up new ways other than just poking pills into people's faces.

It also required um, a lot of rapport building relationships, communication, all sorts of things. And that was kind of my jam. So I stuck around there till I had a few babies. Having babies always upsets those things. I made the decision to not have babies. And work at the same time.

That's my personal decision. I wanted to spend time with my babies, which is just as well, because then I ended up a single mum. And for those of you out there that might be a single parent, you know that that is not an easy gig. Nursing skills were useful but you know, there was no way I could manage shift work and all those things.

I ended up back in Canberra. I actually started a degree in office management. Liam's going to crack up. Because I was concerned, as a single mum, I wouldn't be a nurse. So, I started a few units, did communication. Luckily, I did a bit of IT, that was quite helpful. But, in the summer of that year, I decided to go and do a, like a sort of a, I guess like a placement, or whatever you want to call it, with this big company that made millions of dollars, as in the office manager role.

Well, After a week of that, I was ready to jump off a cliff. It was so boring. And it didn't matter how much money this company made, I did not get excited. And I thought, well, this will never do. I can't live like this. I had, just by chance, decided to earn a bit of pocket money. So I ended up working in the endoscopy clinic at one of the hospitals.

And it was a beautiful place, the hours really suited, but the doctors were wonderful. They wanted to share you, they taught you heaps. It was really inclusive. We had a manager who, I don't know if she'd done this on purpose, but pretty much all of us were single mums. So our CNC really took on. Probably, these days, it probably would be frowned upon, but she was quite maternal, and there was quite a few of them.

And the doctors were very, very good with us. We learnt lots. I found the technology exciting. And obviously... The office management wasn't really taking off. So I went to see a nursing, a nursing lecturer that I knew. She'd been one of my hospital tutors and she now was lecturing at the university. And I went to see her and I said, Sandra, I said, love, I said, Pet, what am I going to do with my life?

And she said, why aren't you doing a degree? And I said, oh, well, you know, I'm a single mum. I couldn't possibly do a degree. And she said, hang on a minute. And of course, hospital training counted towards it. I'd actually accidentally on purpose gone to uni in Tasmania and done a unit in mental health. So that counted.

That was actually a post grad unit. I don't know how I did that. I didn't actually have a computer. I had this sort of weird thing that was like a typewriter, but it wasn't. And it was so poor, I couldn't afford the textbook. But anyway you can do anything if you put your mind to it. So she said, look, You only need to do like four units and you'll have your Bachelor in Nursing.

So that's what I did. And it was fabulous to go back to study. I think, you know, I think it was good to have the university study. I learnt lots about, you know, all sorts of things. Evidence based practice, communication, all sorts of cool stuff. And of course I graduated with a Bachelor of Nursing as well as my Hospital Nursing.

My endoscopy career had kind of taken off. Because that particular unit had now become a day procedure unit. So I started doing scrubbing and scouting and recovery and admissions and all kinds of things. Finally, somebody asked me to do anaesthetics. Well, I have to tell you that did put me to sleep, no pun intended.

So after doing this, and I'd sort of, you know, as many of us do in nursing, sometimes we can be a bit people pleasing and I've been asked and, you know, didn't really interest me. The fabulous thing is though, I did learn a lot about. Semi conscious and unconscious and ventilation and intubation and drugs and pain management.

So I actually acquired much more than I probably realized at the time. Anyway, one fine day, I thought this will never do. I'm a bit sick of being stuck inside. So I went and met with a nurse who was running a community health service. And I said, I need to do something different. She said, would you like to do the hospital not the hospital, the community nursing role?

Fill in, you know, someone was on leave or something and I said, rightio. So I took leave without pay from a little theatre job. Everyone was a bit surprised. And I trotted off to be a community nurse. And the funny part about that is, I'd never driven an automatic car. So the first shift of trying to be a community nurse was actually trying to work out how to start the car.

Because as you know, You've got to have it in park and I'd put it in drive. So that was a bit hectic. The nurse that owned the car had, of course, stripped the car of any maps. And in those days, there was no Google Maps. So the first thing I had to do was go to the service station to buy a map. I love it.

It was fun, wasn't it? And I didn't know, but these community nurses had given me the, what was the worst shift. So it was from nine in the morning till six at night. So it was the diabetics was insulin in the morning and insulin at night peak our traffic Not that we really have a car in Canberra. But anyway, it pretty full on.

I thought it was fantastic Because suddenly I was in people's homes and I could see their budgie see their kids and I could see stuff and I realised that my strong sense of respect, like valuing that I was in people's homes, like, and I liked the dynamic. Like when you're in a hospital ward, you tend to, you know, a lot of the time people don't knock on the door, they just walk in.

There's no conversation about should I, can I sit here? Can I put the light on? Should I turn? But when you're in someone's home, the dynamics quite different and you do in fact become a guest. You are a guest, you are there to do something for that person or with that person and I loved it. I just loved the dynamic.

So I quit my job at the theatre, in the operating theatre. The head nurse rang me and she said, what would it take to have you stay with us? And I said it would take an increase in pay and the opportunity to stay home most days. And she said, well, I can't do that. I thought, thank God for that. So anyway, off I went into community nursing.

It was hilarious. The first few days, I made some pretty interesting mistakes. So those of you that work in theatre know that you get a theatre list, don't you? You get, you know, first one's going to be an appendicectomy. And the list is quite specific and that's how everyone does it. Well, in community nursing, you also get a list and unbeknownst to me, it was not specific.

So I followed the list to the letter like a good little theatre nurse. And of course, one lady rang up my boss and said, why am I getting a shower at two o'clock in the afternoon? And I said, well, the list. And suddenly there was this... There was this new level of autonomy. I could actually decide who I would see and you know, and of course the people that smoked and had kitty litter, you'd see them last because you didn't want to smell like that for the, you know, and autonomy.

I thought this Bit of autonomy. Bit hard when you want to piddle. Luckily, Google Maps did come up with a toiletry app, that's a bit rough, and McDonald's, always good. Anyway, so community nursing, fabulous, having a wonderful time, learning lots getting, making mistakes, getting things wrong. There were things I didn't know I didn't know I was doing wrong but my team would tell me and I would go and learn what I really needed to learn.

Anyway, that team also happened to have a community palliative care team, and being young and daft, they said, Hey, do you want to go and see some palliative care patients? I thought, all right. And I loved it. Because suddenly the communication, the psychosocial stuff I'd done in mental health, the stuff around anesthetics and pain relief, my deep conviction that people needed to die better, and being in their own home and being a guest, all of those things kind of fell into place.

And then, of course, as in my community nursing role in the particular region I was working, we had a gentleman who was in his 30s. He was dying of AIDS, of full blown HIV. And he did not want to be referred to palliative care because he had all of those preconceived notions that he would be written off and it was all about dying.

So, the GP, myself, and the nurse that shared my line, decided we would look after him, but we would consult with the specialist palliative care team and kind of support him at home. And this man was a, apologies if you're Belgian, but this man was a very cranky Belgian man. He probably was cranky because he had full blown HIV.

I don't think that was helping. He was my first needle stick. And of course, when I had to report to the Occupational Exposure Unit, the Infectious Diseases Professor of the day said, darling, this man has a strain of HIV that doesn't respond to antivirals. Or not the ones we had back then. So that was a bit of a, I think I pooed my pants.

I did go home with a very large bag of condoms, which I think worried my husband at the time. Worried I was going to, anyway, all's well that ends well. I'm pleased to know that occupational exposure is handled a bit, a bit more promptly. In those days you had to wait six weeks. That particular professor put me on three lots of antivirals given that his strain was particularly resistant, and I have never felt so sick in my life.

you learn from these things. And I went, gosh, all those poor people living out there with HIV, managing their viral load with these bloody drugs, feeling like this. To me, it was probably as hideous as chemo. I was vomiting. I felt dreadful. One in particular smelled like fried onions. Put me off fried onions for a long time.

Anyway, I finished the course of my drugs. I didn't get through the bag of condoms. But I didn't get HIV and and everything was okay. But lots to learn, you know, when you make a mistake. You know, things to learn. Anyway Reinhold, his journey continued and finally they separated out the teams and I chose to go with the palliative care team.

And I stayed in the palliative care team for probably about 11 years. And two of those years I did as after hours. So a soul practitioner, essentially, Canberra is not a huge place, but this is a tyranny of distance. And so, you know, that was quite a challenge, lots of problem solving lots of, you know, having to kind of make some tough decisions and I probably made a few mistakes, but nobody.

Well, lots of people died. Can't really say that in palliative care, can you? But I think I'm really proud of the fact that I have a collection of lots of little cards and little comments and things that are, were incredibly positive. The Canberra community were very kind to me. My odd ballness actually proved to be a bonus.

It meant that often clients that others wouldn't. I used to see one man at the bus stop because he was too embarrassed to have me in his hostel environment. He didn't want me in the hostel, so we'd meet at the bus stop or at the coffee shop and I would do an assessment. Often the patients who were perhaps a little more interesting than others would seem to wash up on my shores and that didn't bother me at all.

When I started in palliative care, once again, very lucky. A medical director who was genuinely interested in teaching new people. But you know what? I should give myself more credit because I think I had the intellectual curiosity to knock on his door and go, hey, can you explain to me why you prescribed that drug?

Or can you explain to me why we're doing this, that and the other with this patient and something else with another patient? And he would go through it and he would explain it. So, you know, got to take your intelligent curiosity and don't be afraid to knock on doors and just go, Hi, can you explain something to me?

I think that's a really powerful tool. And, you know, I wouldn't say I'm any brighter than anyone else. I certainly don't have academic. prowess. I'm no fan of academic writing, but ask questions. know, if something's kind

of going, what is that? Why is that? Unfortunately in the course of 11 years of providing palliative care in people's homes I'd also taken on a second job as you do. Because I found I really loved teaching and I had an opportunity to teach enrolled nurses at the local college. And they needed someone to teach the palliative care unit.

So it was a nice synergy between my, you know, kind of most of my work, which was clinical and then this little bit of classroom stuff. I did injure myself. And so we didn't have a no lift policy. insist on power lift beds. And of course, I do suffer from people pleaser occasionally, and an event occurred where I chose to help someone when perhaps I shouldn't have.

So that challenged me because now it challenged me on lots of levels. Who was I? Was I a bedside nurse? Was I a teacher? The educator job came up and well, it's a, you know, it was a no brainer really not to take that on. And look, I really enjoyed the educator role. As I was talking to Liam before the podcast, we were working with a hospital, and maybe your hospital's the same, where education's not a big priority.

And so you sort of end up being the dog's body, don't you? Don't you, Liam? You end up being the jack of all trades, and you're doing everything, and you don't know, you're running around like a As we would say in Australia, like a blue arsed fly. You'll have to look that up. so yeah busy times.

Once again, I used my autonomy and my curi intelligent curiosity. I did a, well actually during the, Time I was working at the bedside. I did do a grad third in pal care because I think You do need graduate qualifications. think that's a really hard lesson and especially these days because in Australia graduate qualifications aren't free they're actually quite expensive.

But I think if you're young and you haven't got babies and you're, you know, you're not really in a committed space, get your graduate qualifications. and you can't think, oh well I did a quali I, because I did do a qualification in occupational health and safety. Did I mention it? Because I was in an occupational safety role and I thought maybe I needed to know more about that.

So I did. But I think you've got to be prepared to recognise that your base nursing skills are not always going to, to suit you. You've got to be willing to do things. And in fact, in my time as an educator, I did go back to uni. I actually did graduate diploma in clinical education and as hard as that was I would have liked to have made it a master's but I ran out of huff and also ran out of money.

The exp was starting to get a little bit high and I was getting a bit a little bit long in the tooth. As you can see I'm only 36. And so I decided that I would pull out at a great deep level. I had actually learned some skills that have been really and I don't regret that. have moments when I go, Oh, shoot it on my mouth I had a moment there where I thought briefly.

I'd. Become a nurse practitioner. We have a team within specialist palliative care that goes out to aged care. And I thought about taking up a role as an advanced practice nurse and during my nurse practitioners, but really partly my age and also just energy and just, you know I've got a family, I'm looking after my mum, you know, realistically, it was going to kill me.

So so I kind of went if I had my time again, I probably would have gone that that way. But you know, hindsight and also, you know, you have to think about your life as well. Like, you know my kids, my youngest is. And I enjoy a fantastic relationship with her. And it's because I've had the opportunity to support her and, grow with her.

you can't be doing that if you're trying to do some qualification. So I think nursing's in a strange place. I think there's a lot of pressure to go down an academic road. And look, if that is your bag and you love academic writing and you love research, you just go. Go, go, go and , do it young, build on it, get your skills up, get qualified in it.

There's lots of jobs, really good jobs for nurses in that space. And it's just as valid as the bedside. If you love teaching and you love educating, you do need some clinical experience because otherwise your teaching lacks authenticity, that's what I think. That's just my personal opinion. And if you love being at the bedside and just looking after people and just being a damn good nurse, that is great.

You know, not saying graduate qualifications aren't useful if they're going to build on your capacity to do that job, but to do them just for academic, well, don't bother if you're not loving it, don't do it. And I think that. That's really important. If you're not loving it, if there's not something in the role that's giving you joy, just go knock on another door.

Right. there is an absolute workforce shortage. There is no reason not to tap into every opportunity, you know, have a crack. if you go with the casual, you know, you've got the luxury of. Of, you know, shopping around or as an agency nurse, you've got the option to do that. So, you know, I don't regret any part of my little nursing career.

And here I am, the subtotal of all of that .

I, no, I love, and you know what, I think this is the first podcast where I've said like three words, which I love. , I love, I'm so sorry. No, no. I love it. You

know I'm a chatty catty. This is

why I wanted to bring, like, to connect with you, bring you to, you know, our listeners, because I didn't know all of that about you, and we worked together for a couple of years in Canberra, and I love everything that you just talked about, and there are so many messages and acknowledgments of yourself through that journey, and, like, Pride, and joy, and excitement, and elation, and like learning, and failure, and all of the things.

All of the things that I feel like we're conditioned to today, to think that are sloppy or messy. Or, you know, like, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't jump around, or, you know, mistakes are bad. And, in fact, like, what you've just shown us there is like this evolution of you as an incredible human.

I absolutely... think you need to have a podcast of your own. I could listen to you all day or a storytelling or something. And that's one of the things that I really loved when we worked together was that you I'm just sharing you with the priest here, not that you need it, but I just want to offer it because I feel so compelled to do that.

I'll have a hot flash in a minute. I know. But when we used to work together and you would come and present to, or I was a medical educator, you were working in palliative care, and you would present to our people, like our nurses, they just ate it up. They loved it. And they loved it because of all of the things, because of these amazing experiences that you've created for yourself, and the skill and the wisdom and the authenticity, and you were always just unapologetically You. Like no one else. And I think it's funny that throughout that you, you mentioned a couple of times there, I'm the oddball and I'm, and I'm like, I love that we can really focus and celebrate on being uniquely you. That is what's got you to where you are today. I think today, well, you have

to know yourself, you have to know yourself, you know, and look, I think in life generally, I, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's your career, your relationships, whatever, you know, part of your, inner journey has to be acknowledging who you are.

And there'll always be someone who's better at something that you are. There's always going to be someone who's richer or, you know, more. studied or more published or whatever, but at the end of the day, you are you and if you can configure yourself out a little bit and you know, it's a moving and dynamic thing.

You know, something that might have suited you at one point in your life might not suit later on. and you have to be honest with yourself sometimes. And that can be hard. Like I have to say, it was pretty hard to sort of go, well, I'm, I'm leaving. The operating theater and I mean, you know, they had taught me so much and a part of me probably felt like I owed them, but at the same time you know, I was getting anxious.

I wasn't looking forward to going to work. You know, what the hell, you know, why would you do that

our early warning score, right? Those things, those signs and symptoms in our careers are like our, we're not between the flags anymore. And yeah, I used to teach like, oh no, let's just stay in the job and try and like manage ourselves better.

But actually I'm starting to see that these are signs and symptoms of maybe potentially misalignment in our career. And like, you should just follow that. And I love the analogy of just knock on another door. There are like this week on SEEK, I love looking at SEEK and seeing how many jobs are available because people come to Can I tell you

something, Liam?

I look at Sikh every week, every Sunday, it's one of my little hobbies. because I think sometimes, well, maybe when you get to my age, you get locked into a job and it's like all of a sudden you've lost choice. It's like, you've lost your autonomy. It's like, this is what I do. I look at.

The employment page is not because I'm unhappy, but because I like to explore what else could I be doing? and would that give me more joy? And then, then the second part of it is, no that wouldn't, I still choose to do what I'm doing now. So there's an active choice in being here. It's like in a relationship.

You know, you either choose to stay or you choose to go. You don't sit in that wiggle space. You're being miserable. There's no point. Right. And it is a relationship. Your work is a part of your life. You have to have a relationship with it. And look the other thing is you have to not have unrealistic expectations.=

No job is gonna be fabulous all the time. There's parts of my job like today. Today I had to make and send out 15 different. Certificate. It's the most boring job. And I cut and paste and cut and paste and I'm thinking, what the hell is my nursing career? But you know what? There was half an hour in the day.

I had the pharmacist come by and ask me some questions. I've had phone calls from people who really want to come and have a palliative care experience. I played with some new software. I helped my colleague down on the ward. Like. You have to be realistic. And I do worry sometimes that generations, younger generations, have a bit of a Snapchat view of life.

That somehow or other, you're going to look fabulous, you're going to be fabulous and everything's going to be fabulous. You are going to have bad days. You are going to have days where you won't necessarily have rapport with your patients. You know, or you're working with a team that you're not particularly fond of.

That's okay. you do have to be realistic. And frankly, it wouldn't matter if you're working in a library or working in, you know, Gucci, you know, like it wouldn't matter. You would still have good days and bad days. So I think you do have to approach it with a sense of realism. But you're right.

If you're chronically feeling joyless. And you're chronically feeling lonely and you're chronically feeling like you're not you're a round peg in a square hole, then that's not a nice place to be. And you know what? We're health professionals. So if your health is suffering because you're the round peg in the square hole, then you're not a very good health professional because you're not looking after yourself.

I used to do that with quality of life. We, cause you know, in palliative care, we talk about quality of life and I'd say, what's my quality of life? I've bent over backwards to, help all these people have a good quality of life. What have I done for myself? And sometimes that was a really good lesson to go, hang on a minute.

Yeah. Take a chill pill, have a day off, do something different. I do think it's good that self care, I don't know if internationally it's a thing, but I think self care is really, I can't, look, when I was growing up, nobody talked about it, but that was a Gen X thing. It was like, you know, you had your key around your neck, you went home, you made your own afternoon tea.

You probably didn't talk to someone till tea time when your folks got home. You watched it in Dallas and you went to bed, you know, there really wasn't much going on. But I think, you know, that was not ideal. many of us that came out of their young years. I think if I hadn't jumped into nursing, I would have needed the structure.

I would have maybe subconsciously, I chose things that had structure. I chose nursing or the Navy because I think I felt very lost and very unsure of myself. and so I think, you know there's a bit of, know, generationally, I think we have to think about, well, Where are we? What's real and what's not

real?

Yeah, I love that. And I love everything that you touched on there was all about the connection to yourself and that deep and meaningful that you have internally, right? That sometimes we run away from because it's too difficult. It's in the too hard basket. And really what I'm starting to lean into is really, I think nursing is actually about like building the foundational clinical skills and building upon that.

But it's also about building your mental and emotional health and wealth. It's building your mental and emotional capacity. to new level, new devil, experience the new things as you move up and move throughout your career, whether you stay at the bedside. But it's like, I love what you said there. So many people need to hear that.

I choose this path, right? We're never like just there and stuck and like it's happening to us. I choose this hard today. Like, today it sucked. I chose this hard. This is my job. This is my life. I have a choice to change it. There are 20, 000 jobs on seek that I could apply for. I am not stuck. And like, it's just that conscious kind of reframing and re patterning of our neural pathways.

I love that you mentioned that. Now, before we wrap up. I think you get

sloppy. You get sloppy. You do get sloppy. I think, I think we all kind of Sit in on, you know, sit on our, on our, you know, self and just kind of go, Oh, too hard. I'd have to run an application. I'd have to do this. I'd have to do that. But realistically, if you really wanted to do that, you would anyway.

Sorry, Liam.

No. And I think that that's, that's why we're here. If you're looking to apply, come and work with us. We can help you make that easy. But the, the other side of that also is I think that because we're building, we're so hyper stimulated in this world nowadays that our nervous systems are frazzled, right?

Like we're just, we're fried with the short staffing and all of the things that are happening. So I think also that plays into where we get sloppy, right? And we're like, Oh, it's too hard. But I wanted to touch on this role that you're in right now because, and the work that you're doing as we kind of wrap up, because I think that people wouldn't know that roles like this maybe exist.

It's a super cool role that you're in and I think like, yeah, people wouldn't understand or know that it exists. So tell us about what you're doing now in the palliative care

space. so and it will depend on the country that you're in, but in Australia as there is in Canada and the UK and the States, there's a kind of an acknowledgement that Palliative and end of life care is a significant part of health care.

So in this country, our government has chosen to fund some national programs, which are all about trying to increase the skill set across the workforce, like not just in palliative care specialists, but in everybody that's working in health care. So I basically, I run the region's chapter part of this project.

And my job is to find people who want to learn about palliative care to give them a placement. So they work alongside other disciplines and other health professionals to see. How palliative care works and then part of the placement is then thinking about well what sort of skills and what sort of things can they take back to their home team and grow.

So that's, part of the job. So Pepper, I'm really lucky because Pepper, the program of experience in a palliative approach, and now it's sister. The indigenous program of experience in a value approach has actually been around for 20 odd years and the strength behind this. funded project is that the, lady at the top, Professor Patsy Yates, has been really smart.

When she started out developing this program, from the very beginning, she thought about, what's the evidence I can collect to demonstrate that this work helps? Not only that, but the project is structured. So there's learning guides, there's workshops, and there's the placements. She thought about how can this work stand out from other palliative care projects.

I suspect she probably went to Canada and Ireland and other places and got some grand ideas because you see similar things. But what she had, she was actually originally a cancer nurse, but what she understood is that by Gathering some quantitative data and going, if you take X number of people and you give them this experience, this is the outcome.

And because consistently she's been able to measure that, she can go to the Commonwealth Government every three years and go, hey, can you fund this project? We're not the only project that's funded, but our project is specifically around that learning journey. So I feel really excited for me in an education space to have learning guides.

that I can give advice on, that I can use, that I can take pieces out of. So we had a, one of the guides is a disability learning guide, and I did a workshop with some disability workers. So I pulled the case study out of the learning guide to show them a person with a disability traveling through the palliative care system.

So, You know, when you're looking at evidence, when you're fishing out stuff, when you're thinking about ways of sharing ideas with other people, I mean, there's a, there's a big adult education component here, which I'm, I'm very lucky because I've had a bit of education on that, but, you know, looking at, well, what is it that people want to learn and how do they learn the best?

And what's the resource that's going to get them there? I find the PEPA program really exciting because it forces people to have reflections. It forces people to do something with the placement. Not all of them do. To be honest, that'll change. You're out there and you're doing a paper placement. This one third of you are only doing something that's going to change.

But it's great because like at the moment I've got a doctor who works actually not in the ACT but in a region that relies on the ACT for healthcare. She's so excited about building her palliative care skills and going back to her community and being able to do that role. That's fantastic because now I'll be looking at all of these learning resources and go okay, what can I give this doctor, this GP so that she can have the self efficacy and the confidence to deliver the care to her community.

The thing about education roles, I think you have to learn early. and anyone out there that's in an education role, you know how when you do bedside nursing and for those of you out there, you know, you're going to a, bay and you or, or a ward or a bed, and you see a patient and they're obviously having a really sh. terrible time and they smell funny and they don't look great and you apply all your nursing magic and you relieve their suffering and you change their sheets and you wash their face and you get them a cup of tea and you get them to ring their mum or whatever it is that's going to get them into a happy space and when you leave that space you go oh that was exciting and you're writing the notes don't you go oh like a list of all the marvellous things you've just done you don't get that in education.

So you have to be prepared to know that you, you know, like I've just went and taught, you know, 15 disability workers. But I kind of secretly hope that trickles out and it happened for me. Yeah. The other day. So I was supporting the clinical team with this particularly complex patient. He's got mental health issues.

He's got a head and neck cancer. And I went out there with the palliative care nurse who was quite new at this. And we met with the mental health nurse. And I said to the mental health nurse, I said, you're doing a great job. And he goes. don't you remember me? And I went, Oh, I didn't. But anyway, he said, Oh, no, I, I did a pepper placement.

And so even though he's working in a mental health role, because he'd actually come and done a placement, he was now able to take some of what he'd learned and actually use it to care for this client. So that made me really excited. So you just have to see, you have to see wins in a different way. And I'll be honest.

in the probably the first maybe year, two years of having an education role, I was beginning to wonder what I was really doing. But you just have to realize that nursing Has the, we have the lens to, to do a whole range of things, whether it's gathering evidence, whether it's making information easier for patients and families to understand, whether it's developing tools to give our colleagues some skills.

we have that lens, it's part of how we're trained. And we also have the, hopefully, I think nurses have this kind of, there's nothing too dumb or too smelly or too scary. Like we really have, well I mean, I speak for myself maybe, but I have a bit of a boots and all kind of thinking. It doesn't matter what I'm, what sort of client or what sort of clinical setting that we're looking at, there's always a way kind of getting in there and pulling out the key bits and helping that person.

And I think nursing has that uniqueness in that we're not just science driven. We're also allowed a little bit of intuition and there's a little bit of art there, you know, we're allowed to kind of go, you know, Yeah. It's, you know, you've got that medication, but I'm sensing you're still not feeling right.

Is it, what else can I, is there something else you think that might help? Oh, some ginger beer. Hmm. Hmm. I've got near that in the kitchen. I'll get the wardy to the vending machine. You know, like you've actually come up with something that, you know, nobody else in the team would potentially have the lens to do, you know.

It is, and it's a small stuff. And I'm sure like, we definitely need to do a whole episode on palliative care, like, like helping people, die better and, and have,

you know, I'd like to, and I'm, look, I'm, I'm more than happy to do a topic focus. And, and I think, I think one of the things that would be really exciting is I'm just wondering if the people who've done it today.

If they've got some fears, some worries, things maybe that's happened to them around patients dying when they've died of a life limiting illness, share them with Liam because what we can do is we can then use that as a, as a kind of a springboard to be able to support you. And I know, you know, you mentioned one of the people today's from Korea and I don't know what the palliative care setting is in Korea and I rather suspect there's probably not a lot going on.

So you know each of you are going to have unique kind of experiences and unique kind of concerns and I'd, really like you to, if you can be. you know, motivated to let Liam know, because then we can add that to the next platform. Because I am very passionate about dying. We all deserve to die feeling safe.

We used to talk about good deaths, and I think that's a bit glib, because there's some deaths that aren't good. But I think everybody deserves to feel safe. Everybody deserves to feel cared for and whether that's just someone asking, you know, using their name or making sure that we're, you know acknowledging and validating some of the anxieties and fears.

That's what palliative care is about. You don't have to become a whiz on opiate rotation and opiate conversion and all that. It's actually about putting yourself. Well, that empathy thing. I'm sure you've seen it, Liam. There's a wonderful video from Bren Brown about empathy. If you go to YouTube, Bren Brown, B R E N E, Brown, and it's an empathy video and it's very good, but it really teaches us that, that sometimes as nurses, we just need to settle down, stop the biological markers and actually looking at the person.

Yeah,

I love that. We talk a lot about being basic. Basic, quote unquote, makes you advanced, right? Like, we talk about that a lot here, and like, let's, that, it's those things that really matter. It's knowing, you need to know your patient, and know that they adore music, and that in their last days, like, they would love nothing more than to just have some music playing in the background.

The simplest of little things, like the ginger beer, or just like... You know wiping their brow like whatever it might be. You're like, you're the guru of all this stuff So we definitely need to book in another time and explore this But I'm so privileged to have shared your story today with so many people.

We have people in Korea listening Because it's been in the top 100 in Korea. Hello, Koreans. Hello. And Australia and all of the places, you're all welcome here. But we need to lock this in for an episode two where we dive into palliative care. So as Rachel said, if you want to learn something specific about palliative care or you've had experiences, because I think one thing that you touched on before we came on this call that we don't talk about enough is that these experiences can be traumatic for us as humans.

Who would have thought? and, you know, we can rationalize them all we want with our minds, but we are beings and we have visceral responses. And you know, like I said in the, maybe before we were recording, our thoughts, our beliefs and our values around, chronic illness, around death and dying, they actually influence how we think.

And then that influences how we make our clinical decisions. Yeah. And that then influences perhaps someone's last days and you know, we celebrate a birth because it's magical and for the most part, well, it depends on whether you get mum or it's a bit messy. But you know what I mean? It's a one off moment.

The birth of a child is a one off moment. The death of a person, the end of someone's life is a one off moment. And we're often as nurses, the ones that are privileged to be there and to be with their loved ones and to actually acknowledge some of the stuff that's going on for them. and really it.

It's not rocket science. I did say I'm not the smartest person in the world. It's not rocket science. It really isn't. Yeah.

Well, we're going to keep people hanging for the next episode where people hear about the palliative care approach that's not rocket science. Love your work. I'm so grateful for your time.

Thank you so much for sharing. Your experiences today, because I know that there is just one person where you said earlier, I just want to have that trickle effect, like you just want evidence of that. And there's somebody today that's been inspired to pursue a palliative care career that's maybe in endoscopy that thinks palliative care is not available to them, right?

Because they're, you know, that's just what we've kind of been conditioned to believe is true. So thank you for sharing that. We will include all of Rachel's kind of, like like the Pepper Program, stuff like that, in the show notes, so that there's acknowledgement of that. One question before we do leave, if somebody's like, Oh my god, the Pepper Program, I really want to do this, how do I do this?

Can you tell us briefly, like, is it in, it's across Australia, how do people connect

with that? So there's a website, there's a national website. PEPA don't put two P's in it. You'll get pepper pig, not helpful. But PEPA it's a website. There's there's actually a learning management system attached to it.

So there's lots of resources. There's contact details everyone in Australia. We'll have someone in their region, so Western Australia's got a manager, Victoria, blah, blah, blah. And the website will lead you to wherever you're living. Sometimes, like in my case, the ACT is tiny and it's in the middle of New South Wales.

So sometimes I have health professionals that sort of work around my area. Yass or Goulburn or some of those places look me up because I'm happy to, do that. But PE, PA, One P you'll find us. And look, really, if you want to Google Patsy Yates and really see a nurse who started out as a cancer nurse, as a distinguished professor, like she is like the queen of palliative care in this country.

she has achieved so much and real inspiration to see as a nurse, you can do anything if you want it.

You know, I just got a response. Yeah, you can do

whatever you want. You really can. And look, sometimes it'll be scary, sometimes you'll go, what the heck am I doing? But that's life.

I love it.

Awesome. No, you can do anything. And as we always sign off this episode, stay safe and stay curious. As Rachel says, intellectually curious, knock on those doors and we will see you in the next episode.