Choosing a location

Peter Bothams, Team Manager, CQ Mental Health and Other Drugs, Rockhampton
I moved up to Rockhampton in 2003 and what attracted me was the great opportunities in a regional area in Queensland.
I'm a Queenslander originally, had lived in New South Wales and overseas and was really keen to get back to a regional area and lots of opportunities arose.

Kim Swinbourne, Clinical Nurse, Emergency Department, Emerald Hospital
Emerald's a really vibrant little community. I know that one of my biggest fears coming here was being isolated from family and friends, but 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.

Belinda Tidbury, Manager, Oral Health Services
Everyone is so friendly and embracing. I really enjoy the culture here in the rural environment. They make me feel immediately part of the team. I'm actually surprised that I didn't know how much I'd settle into a small town.

Tracy Gunthorpe, Critical Care Nurse, Biloela Hospital
The biggest encouragement to stay with Queensland Health is the people that I get to work with. I've been working at Biloela Hospital for two years now, and it's both a really busy place and exciting place to work but also a place where you feel like the people that you work with are your family in a way.

Sian Barber, Graduate Nurse, Blackwater Multipurpose Health Service
I feel like health professionals here in Blackwater are quite well respected, and that respect is also returned to the members of the community.

Sherry Savage, Physiotherapist, Rockhampton Community Health
Already having ties in the community in regards to family but also sporting endeavours, staying here and working in my community has been the obvious choice, and that has been made easier by my leadership encouraging me to further my career and ensuring that I'm keeping my training and my skills up as well.

Jenny Lynch, Nurse Unit Manager, Mental Health Inpatient Unit, Rockhampton Hospital
My colleagues are friendly, they're positive towards me, I get good response from people, I feel accepted and there's a lot of opportunities here.

Dr David Molhoek, Emergency Department, Emerald Hospital
Probably the biggest draw card to working out here is the fact that it is a centre of excellence for rural generalism. It's the place to be if you want to be a rural generalist trainee. You get the experience and the exposure to make you a better doctor. You'll see cases that will prepare you for your training, and you really do get to see a full breadth of practice.

Corey Dern, Harm Reduction Officer, Alcohol and Other Drugs, Rockhampton
So there's a really supportive learning and development culture within the HHS. There's management development programs, clinical leadership programs available at any level. It's a very large organisation, very diverse, and there's lots of different pathways you can go down to to help your career.

Anneka Kanters, Registered nurse/midwife, Maternity, Emerald Hospital
We like to support you for any additional education, if you are undertaking any postgraduate studies. The commitment of management to ensuring that my skills are up to date with current guidelines and protocols is fantastic. I'm actually on my way to Brisbane in a couple of weeks to spend two weeks in a neonatal nursery, taking care of sick babies to upskill myself and ensure that I'm able to provide that care out in Emerald.

Dr Thomas John, Director of Clinical Services, Mental Health, Rockhampton
The universities here include the CQ University which has its own range of topics of advanced specialisation and reputation. There are flights to any part of the country from here, and Brisbane is just an hour away by a flight.

Mollie Neate, Registered nurse/midwife, Women and Paediatric Ward, Gladstone Hospital
So Destination 2030 has really been about improving ourselves as a hospital and strategically breaking down everything so that we're constantly improving the great care we provide to our great patients.

Dr Hitesh Rathi, Principal Dentist, Oral Health Services, Rockhampton Hospital
We're talking more about our vision and our values now, which is great. We are thinking about how we can make this place the best for our patients and continuously striving to improve this place for our staff.

Joanne Wex, Director Clinical Investigations and Diagnostic Services, Clinical Measurements, Rockhampton Hospital
There’s been a massive culture change within CQ Health. There's been a very important four standards that we live by: Respect, Commitment, Care and Integrity. That's really the basis of our values that we provide to our patients and and how we act and how we act to also each other.

Dr Sahitya Kamineni, Staff Specialist Mental Health, Central Queensland Mental Health Alcohol and Other Drugs
I'm very impressed by the organisational culture because they're very responsive, they're very forward-looking, they want to know what your concerns are and they want to hear, listen, investigate it, and put supports in place.

Dr Thomas John, Director of Clinical Services, Mental Health, Rockhampton
Leadership has been able to look at not just in terms of clinical service delivery, they looked at things like what provides satisfaction to the staff and making sure that there is a good voice for the staff to be able to feedback and that's reflected in the staff surveys and the outcomes that are being seen in the staff saying they are feeling respected and valued.

Shastee Walmsley, Director of Nursing / Facility Manager, Blackwater Multipurpose Health Service
What's kept me working in CQ is the great people that we work for, it's always nice to be working for a great organisation, there's been lots of opportunities for career progression and succession planning for staff out here which is great, particularly in the rural areas.

Clay Renwick, Intern (rotations), Emergency Department, Yeppoon Hospital
When everything starts working together, patient care can only prosper from that.

Annette Hill, Advanced Indigenous Health Worker, Adult Mental Health
So Banana is the 'Shire of Opportunity', and certainly that rings true for career advancement within health and certainly with CQHHS. In the past there's been an increase of Indigenous jobs and a lot of opportunities for Indigenous staff and working towards this will help to close the gap.

Timothy Parker, Cardiac Scientist, Cardiac Investigations Unit, Rockhampton Hospital
It's a real community up here, and it's good to sort of have a lot of support when you're starting off in a new career.

Corey Dern, Harm Reduction Officer, Alcohol and Other Drugs, Rockhampton
I've got flexible work arrangements, within work, which helps me with life outside of work as well.

Mollie Neate, Registered nurse/midwife, Women and Paediatric Ward, Gladstone Hospital
I'd heard that the region was beautiful, really close to the southern Great Barrier Reef and that my scope of practice would be much more vast here because it's a regional area than if I was based in Brisbane, which is where my family's from. I was just really attracted to improving my experience and knowledge by coming to a regional area.

Jenny Lynch, Nurse Unit Manager, Mental Health Inpatient Unit, Rockhampton Hospital
I feel like I fit in here and I feel there's a lot of opportunities for me.

Thomas Toner, Clinical Nurse Consultant - Mental Health, Community Care Unit, North Rockhampton
It's not what I expected it's a great laid-back place to live, with everything you need - the beach is 20 minutes away and the organisation is great to work for, there are good career development opportunities, come and try it what's the worst that can happen?

Bernadette Mckinley, Clinical Nurse, Acute Care Team, Rockhampton Hospital
"It sounds too good to be true." I hear this all the time, and it's not too good to be true, it's real. It's actually life changing.

Peter Bothams, Team Manager, CQ Mental Health and Other Drugs, Rockhampton
I had a five-year plan to move here and to move back to a metropolitan region but really, Central Queensland has captured my heart, it's a great place to live and grow and develop as a clinician and I see myself staying here for many years ahead into the future and I hope you'll come and join me.

Welcome to North West Health and Hospital Service. Living and working in northwest Queensland.
[Music]
This is the time right now to reinvent yourself. I really want those genuine passionate people to come and live here.

You can reinvent yourself totally with your lifestyle, with your work opportunities.

Ffor me going out to the Bush was just a no-brainer, I'm part of something you know, I feel valued here.

I came out here as a young 17-year-old and as soon as I come out to mount Isa just doors open, I met so many different people, made so many friends.

A lot of people will come and be, 'oh I'm only going to be here for 2 years' and then 5, 6, 7, 8 years later will decide to stay.

I've got a typical Mt Isa story. I moved here with a 6 month plan and a decade later with a wife, 2 beautiful children and a house and here I am.

I was meant to be here for 3 months and it's now turned into over 3 years.

When I first came there there were small babies that are now having babies. It's really lovely to see that, it's a continuity of care I guess.

Everybody has such an important role here in North West and I might be biased because I'm the chief executive, but there's no one staff that's more important than anyone else out here. If we don't have good cleaning, if we don't have good administrative support, we won't be able to provide really good care for our patients.

It's very multidisiplinary, very multicultural, so there's lots of people to always learn and kind of grow from. As well, there always a very friendly face around who's willing to help work together towards that common goal of helping our patients.

Having that reception and being greeted when you walk into work as a medical student you feel valued in all regards as well, like you are needed.

I have a very great support network here, like a lot of the nurses push me to do my best every day.

I feel like it's gained my experience up a lot more and I literally love rural and remote nursing.

Have the courage to come, we are here we give them support to settle with us. It's a small town, so it's a small family, we look after each other.

I have never regretted anything about moving up here. Go make that move, expand on your life because you never know what's supposed to happen for you.

I’m James, I’m the senior physio out here at Charleville Hospital. As you can see in the background, it’s a beautiful hospital and a beautiful place to work. I’ve been out here for about three months now, after being at PA in Brisbane for a few years.

Working, and even having a placement in these areas, probably find that you do gain confidence a lot quicker than if you were on a certain ward in a big hospital, just because you’ve got the opportunities there to learn.

Charleville is one of the most welcoming, outback towns in Queensland. It’s home to the Bilby Centre, the Cosmos Centre, the Royal Flying Doctors were established out there.

What drew me out here was just the lifestyle. It’s a great place to be. You get to work in a small, close-knit team. Everyone knows who you are. The Director of the hospital knows your name. I walk down the street on a Saturday morning, go get my coffee. I know the person who’s making it for me, I know the guy sitting outside the shop and there’s a patient I’m treating across the road walking better because I saw them two days before. I think that’s pretty special.

The big part of living in these communities as people often think with health professionals, that we come in, we come here for six months, do our job and then we leave. I think when the community actually see that we’re prepared to stick around and stay, all of the sudden it changes and they want you to be a part of the community and feel like you belong here. It’s just very, very rewarding.

Why I enjoy working at Charleville, you get to see everything, everything comes through the door. Over here we get lots of muscular skeletal, the patient numbers are always nice and busy, gives you plenty of hands-on experience. But that one-to-one interaction also gives you more scope to try and grow and develop what you are doing with your practice.

From a more junior point in our career out here, we are exposed to the service delivery side of things, and resource development and quality improvement activities, which in bigger hospitals you often have to be in the really senior positions to do and see a lot of that sort of thing. Which in terms of career progression down the track, is a big step.

Once a month we get to fly out with RFDS, in this awesome aircraft here, and go out and service some of the most rural and remote parts of Queensland. That’s something I definitely never would have done in the city or PA where I’ve come from previously.

We are very very lucky out here in remote areas with the services that we have and resources we have in place for students. I think we see that there is a need, that we want to develop that next group of remote clinicians, so we want to give them the best opportunity that they can have while they are out here. And then there is a lot of funding going towards that as well because that’s been recognised. So here in Charleville we’ve got this great SQRH building that we are in at the moment, that’s got your simulation lab, you can basically do anything, get all your experiences in here. SQRH have the student housing, so there’s always other students around, so there’s that support as well. It’s not like you’ve got to come out here and pay a lot of money to stay in a motel or anything. In terms of for students, we’re really set up with resources.

The experiences that students continue to have and continue to report on, is that Charleville is a place they want to return to, to practice as health professionals.

The lifestyle out here other than work, there’s a great sporting culture, there’s a great social life, there’s lots of young families and it’s definitely something that I’d considered myself being out here long term and I know there’s a lot of people out here that are in the same position.

If you’re thinking of coming for a remote placement, out here like Charleville, do it. You won’t regret it. If you’re prepared to make the most of it and be a part of the community, then you will definitely enjoy it.

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.

Well, I think showcasing what life and what practicing in a place like this is really important.

It's a beautiful community here. Everyone recognises each other. We see each other all the time.

It's a beautiful place to work and a beautiful community and very lucky to work here.

Just the experience of being here, I think, is really unique and it's a special opportunity.

Being a remote health clinician is fantastic. You work amongst a close knit team.

No two days are the same at work and that's a real great thing about the role.

The outreach work that we do is typically in places that are very hard to get to otherwise.

We see GP referrals, we see hospital emergency department referrals. It’s just a really broad spectrum of presentations that we see here, so it's always interesting.

We have a lot of community sports available. We're lucky enough to have a boat up here so we do like to go to some of the neighbouring islands. We find plenty of things to do actually, there's there's lots of things on offer.

We have a really good amount of time that we can spend with students, and allowing students to have a more of a hands on approach.

I think come with an open heart and an open mind, and your ears wide open to learn as much as you can about community and I guess the way things are may be done in smaller places.

If you're thinking about RIPPAH, I can only say go for it. It's an awesome opportunity.

I guess if you like a bit of an adventure, you're ready for something new every day, it’s definitely a placement you should consider and give a go.

I wanted a career in Weipa because I was lucky enough to do a placement here, and I saw the great need for allied health and occupational therapy in this region.

I think RIPPAH is a really exciting opportunity for students coming to Torres and Cape to spend a prolonged period of time in the region, getting to know what it's like to live here.

What a perfect opportunity to experience an area of Queensland that you haven't visited before.

We've been able to go fishing, boating and just exploring, doing lots of outdoor activities. It's been great compared to living at home.

A big part of my goal to have students is to really open up the students ideas of actually coming to work in a remote or regional setting.

The thing I love most about being a remote health clinician is that no one day is the same.

For me, I really like that it's close knit teams, everybody’s willing to help you. There's people who will problem solve with you and although it's smaller, there's very much a spirit of always working together.

The way they practice out here is very collaborative so there isn't often a time where we're just going with the OT it's always in collaboration with the speech pathologist or the physio.

I encourage a lot of peer learning, students working together with the same patients, that just fosters a lot more learning.

My advice for anybody considering to apply for RIPPAH is to come. It's the best experience, a great opportunity to grow as a person and as a student clinician.

I saw how being flexible with a health care approach can be really valuable for a community.

What a difference you can make to people in remote and rural areas.

RIPPAH up here!