Emerald's a really vibrant little community and my husband got a job in
the mines, our family moved up here to start a new life. When I finished my
study as a registered nurse through CQ University I was able to gain a grad
position here at Emerald Hospital and I've worked my way up from there to now
being a clinical nurse.
Working in Emerald is the place to be if you want to be a broad generalist trainee.
It is the perfect model of how the care should be delivered, we've got
the perfect size of town and services to make it work, and it will make you a
better doctor. It will provide you the skills and support to be able to upskill
to become a rural generalist and you can do it in an environment where you are
supported by your colleagues to explore those opportunities.
I wanted to work in a rural facility to widen my scope of practice and enrich my career.
So a real fear I had before coming to Emerald was that I would be living in the sticks.
In fact, it's the complete opposite - the experiences I've gained and the
friendships that I've built out here have been incredible.
So emerald as a community has got a lot of opportunity to connect and engage
there's many sporting groups, there's good cafes and restaurants
that make being out in a rural area just that little bit easier and you have
come from the city.
Once you start working in a small community hospital, you definitely build up such a great rapport with all the
staff, and I know I can walk down the hallway now and be able to say hello to everybody
by name and they know me as well.
In my spare time I enjoy going out to Carnarvon Gorge, Great Keppel Island, boating trips, going to the races,
going to the rodeos... there's endless adventures out here that I was really missing out
on in the metropolitan area.
Because there's a lot of people who have moved here for work as well there's just
a very open and accepting community to be welcomed into and to find your little
niche to engage in.
So outcomes for our staff and our patients for our
vision in 2030 is our stability in giving our staff empowerment to make
good clinical choices and that flows on to the patient care that we give.
Our community relies on our high standard of care out here because you know we're
a small rural community but we are providing such a huge service to the district.
I'm able to work alongside doctors and we're able to bounce ideas
off each other, and really gain that teamwork approach that we've been trying
to gain throughout maternity care.
I think there's a lot of misconceptions around what it's like to work in a rural area and I think
Emerald really bucks the trend on a lot of those. We've got a lot of services locally available here
including a great imaging service, great pathology services, which do make
clinical decision making a lot easier, so we're well supported in that regard and
we can support the hospitals around us who don't have those facilities so
you're not in some backward stump out here you do have access to a lot of
tools to get things done and make the right decisions for your patients.
Get rural! It's a fantastic way to upskill and increase your scope of
practice. The skills that I have developed in the last six months are
skills that I thought would take me years to develop in a metropolitan area.