St George

I love the sense of community; I feel like I can make a difference here. I like how tight-knit our communities are, everyone is so friendly, approachable and appreciative of what we do.

I’ve been taking student now for five years in my role, on community and public health nutrition placements, around twelve students a year. What I try to show them is, is that sense of community. As if they were living and really working here.

She was very social, so potentially would of enjoyed the part-time work opportunity but I also know she spent a lot of her spare time socialising with other students here on placement. They went to the Carnarvon Gorge; they went to rodeos… they experienced the lifestyles. Probably wouldn’t have got to do that so much if she was working part-time.

There are plenty of things to do in St George. Apart from the river where you can get involved in a lot of fishing and water sports, there’s also the country university centre, which is recently established to support local students in St George but also student who are on placement in the region.

Went down to St George, thinking that St George would be this red, dusty town. It’s absolutely stunning. Went and had a picnic with my partner just by the river, and it was absolutely beautiful. It was completely different to what I had expected or thought that it would be like.

We’ve recently purchased twelve rooms for student accommodation in St George. These have been fully refurbished as a perfect place for students to be able to engage in their studies, be living in a community with other students who are also on placement, while they are in St George undertaking important health professional training.

The accommodation is located only a couple of kilometres away from the hospital. Students can either drive there very quickly or we have bicycles available for students to be able to get between the hospital and our student accommodation.

Taking so many students I reckon I’ve nearly picked a type. They integrate straight away, they know how to build rapport with partners, they know how to understand and prioritise community needs. They can put themselves in the context that they have been placed in and just embrace all of the information that is available to come up with a few strategies, that aren’t necessarily their strategies, it’s really what the community has told them and that’s what I really love seeing. I know I can really take that student and really push them that next step. That student is absolutely advanced in terms of work readiness.

We’ve worked on a community food security needs assessment, where we were determining priorities for our communities and we’ve come up with solutions. We’ve got the Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food rolling out in Charleville, in Roma, Augathella, Quilpie, Cunnamulla and that all was derived from a student placement. We’re dealing in domains of food supply and access, we’re looking at chronic disease management, we’re looking at mum’s and bub’s nutrition. All very different, it’s the whole stretch of the life cycle.

For the positions that exist, this provides an opportunity to really prioritise community wellbeing as opposed to just acute care provision and take it through that process of its beginnings and iterate as we’re going, another student placement to work on the recommendations and another student placement. It just seems to perpetuate and build as we go along, which is just really cool.

I think it all interconnects, you develop relationships and partnerships. You may join the race club with the intention of just helping deliver a race meet, and all of the sudden you build working relationships with people that work at the school. I think it’s organic, it’s not forced but it opens way more doors for me than just relying on formal partnerships all the time.