International Nurses Day 2023 - Part 2
In the second of our two-part celebration of nursing at Family Planning Australia, we interview International Programme Nurse Educator Vijeta, our Regional Continuous Quality Improvement Nurse Susan, and Nurse Educator Anum.
Vijeta
Vijeta is a registered nurse working on the International Programme team at Family Planning Australia.
She designs and delivers clinical training and resources for partners in the Pacific, across nations including Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tonga and Kiribati.
Vijeta explained that there are two main issues which the nurses at Family Planning Australia work to address in the Pacific - "One of them is that women in the Pacific are dying of cervical cancer at rates that are so much higher than in Australia. It's a preventable disease, so we work on bolstering cervical screening programs.
"The other issue is a lack of family planning services, which means it is more difficult for women to have choice and control over their bodies. We work to improve sexual health education and access to contraceptives", she said.
Based in the Family Planning Australia Newington office, Vijeta has taken overseas trips to visit partners in the Pacific. In-country, she has facilitated in-person ‘train the trainer' sessions, to upskill Pacific-based health workers so they are able to provide training to other health workers. In the past year, Vijeta and our other International Programme Nurse Educator have provided clinical training, consultations, and advocacy to over 77 health workers overseas.
Alongside her work in the international team, Vijeta continues clinical work, spending a day a week seeing patients or assisting with the day surgery.
Reflecting on her nursing career so far, Vijeta told me – "after completing my Bachelor of Nursing Degree, I spent the first five years of my career in critical care. On the emergency wards, I developed an interest in women's health. I found myself thinking about the way women move through the system".
She returned to university to complete an Honours degree, with a thesis exploring female presentations of intimate partner violence and the nursing response - "My thesis changed my world view and taught me so much about the importance of primary health workers. Nurses really don't know how powerful they are", she said.
Inspired by her experiences working in Women's Health Centres, Vijeta' moved into reproductive and sexual health full-time, and is grateful to a mentor who encouraged her to do the Reproductive and Sexual Health Clinical Accreditation Program.
Vijeta worked across outpatient gynecology, sexual health and women's health, and completed her masters in Women's Health Medicine before taking an opportunity on Family Planning Australia's International Programme.
"Family Planning Australia sees that nurses have a skillset of their own. [We] are really good diagnosticians in our own right… reproductive and sexual health nurses get a lot of autonomy", she said.
"For me, the bottom line is equitable access to healthcare for women. I feel so lucky that my career has taken me to a place where I am able to directly impact women's right to choose, women's right to understand their bodies. I think that's the best thing ever."
Susan
Susan has been working for Family Planning Australia for an impressive 25 years.
Description automatically generated"I started out working at Family Planning for a four-hour shift on a Monday night. I enjoyed the kind of work so much that this gradually expanded to include more and more of my working life," she explains.
Susan has moved across Family Planning Australia's varied health services during her 25-year career with our services.
"For six years I worked in health promotion, travelling into community settings and working with young people and the CALD community to provide education around sexual and reproductive health – safe sex, menopause and contraception" she said.
"I also worked with women who had breast cancer. I would provide information and education around what to expect with menopause and sexual health. We would involve the partners of women who had breast cancer to help them understand what their partner was going through which they appreciated."
At the moment, Susan works in Family Planning Australia's Newcastle clinic both as a clinician and as the Regional Continuous Quality Improvement Nurse.
"We help to ensure standards are upheld. Family Planning Australia's policies and procedures are evidence led, and we are motivated to keep improving patient experience," Susan said.
Susan's wealth of experience in the world of reproductive and sexual healthcare, and across Family Planning Australia's diverse sites, gives her a lot to reflect on.
"I have worked across many regional and rural settings. Working in regional locations can bring real complexities, and nurses work to overcome these and provide crucial reproductive and sexual healthcare services to patients across NSW.
"Telehealth has been great for working with clients in regional and remote areas... A doctor can send a referral or prescription after a telephone call with a patient, and this expands what we can do at our outreach sites, and how much we are able to help clients without requiring them to travel for hours each way," she said.
Susan also wanted to emphasise the interdisciplinary nature of clinical work at Family Planning Australia, explaining that each staff member is equally reliant on the varied teams and individuals which include admin, doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, and social workers.
"At Family Planning Australia, nurses are supported and encouraged to work to their full scope of practice, including extended skills such IUD and implant insertions and removals," she said.
"Ultimately this kind of interdisciplinary working allows us to provide more clients with high quality care, which is what we all care most about."
Anum
Registered Nurse Anum teaches Family Planning Australia's training courses for health workers in Australia, both face-to-face and online.
She knew that she wanted to work in reproductive and sexual health right at the start of her nursing career, while she was still a student - "during my nursing degree I took a placement at a GP clinic which ran an STI clinic on Fridays, and I just found it so interesting."
"In reproductive and sexual health, you get to know the whole patient. Their lifestyle, their family life. You are given insight into so many extremes in life, the good and the bad", she reflected.
Before she came to work at Family Planning Australia, Anum completed her Postgraduate Degree in Sexual and Reproductive Health, and she took an opportunity to travel to work in a HIV clinic in Sao Paolo, Brazil, giving her insight into healthcare provision in diverse global settings.
Alongside teaching with the Education team at Family Planning Australia, Anum has kept up her patient-facing work with regular shifts in the Newington Day Surgery and in other sexual health clinics.
"Patient-facing work is still important for me, and I find that clinical work in the reproductive and sexual health world is especially fulfilling. People trust you with information about the most intimate corners of their lives, and that is so special", she explained.
Most recently, Anum has been teaching Family Planning Australia's Reproductive and Sexual Health Care Accreditation Program, which provides nurses and midwives with training across a huge scope of crucial services, including contraceptives, cervical screening, breast health, sexually transmissible infections (STIs) and pregnancy options and men's health.
She has also been travelling around NSW to provide training in cervical screening for midwives, funded by the Cancer Institute NSW. This has given her an opportunity to provide crucial training in settings across the state, from Coffs Harbour, to Batemans Bay, to Dubbo.
"These courses are often optional training, so the health workers we're teaching are so engaged and enthusiastic about reproductive and sexual healthcare, and that's lovely."
"I just love working in education – whether that's educating patients or running courses for health workers. It's amazing to know that you're empowering patients with information which will help them to stay safe and healthy, and empowering nurses and midwives to provide such important healthcare", she said.
