Goodooga

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I came here as a new grad and I've stayed on since. I've always  enjoyed working here - one of the other reasons is that I met my husband in my new grad year - and the team environment here and getting the things I get to do is second to none - you can't get to do it anywhere else.

You can Triage our here, you can canulate, venepuncture, IDCs, SPCs you name it - we can do it out here.

I am a ward nurse generally but obviously in a rural facility I am also an accident and emergency nurse, when there's a trauma or there's a need for it. 

I also do community nursing, we also have dialysis here at this facility, I've also done dialysis nursing and obviously we have palliative patients.  We have a lot of post rehab patients, so we do a lot of wound care.

The variety is on the of the things I enjoy the most about working here, also you have aged care, you have emergency and you have your normal everyday ward work, so every day is something different and you get to experience things you wouldn't see in the city as they would be swept away to a specialist unit.

I have so many more skills my friends wish they would have but don't, they don't get the opportunity with all the junior Doctors down there in the city.

My role is virtual outreach support to the nursing staff in the district, education sessions through the video conference we support the staff because they may have a question about a medication or a procedure.   For this month in May we have approximately a hundred virtual sessions offered.

When I started working here, they supported me for triage, like how to work in a rural ED. First of all if anything comes through the ED, how to handle that, I've done a vaccination course, advanced life support, so if something happens we can administer drugs.

We have excellent support from vCare which is the speciality emergency team based in Dubbo, and all the retrieval teams they can connect us with.

Here in Nyngan we are very lucky - we have the support of our managers and usually on call RN overnight.  

Because of the diverse nursing that I do I've always been able to do those extra courses whether it be palliative care, community nursing, dialysis.

We're using this technology and this education to improve, to help our nurses, support our nurses.

I've done lots of emergency courses through the district with training days on site here or just in Dubbo or in other towns and they've help further my skills give me that confidence to be in charge.

We do have more registered nurses starting, here - New Grads - which is also very enjoyable as you get to  help them and  you learn new things off them, things they are learning at uni or they have learned in other facilities, so the team is quite diverse but in a way it is very experienced and very strong.

Working in a small rural facility again, the team is not just the nurses on the ward, its actually the whole facility. I might ring a community nurses today to get an assessment with a patient that's being discharged tomorrow, I might actually speak to the front office staff about something particular about that patient, so actually everyone is involved because it is such a small community and a small facility so my whole team is everyone including the ambulance officers who walk through the door.

They're beautiful out here, I couldn't ask for a better team, they're all lovely, all supportive, you just couldn't find any, any team like it.

In a small rural facility everyone is dependent on eachother , its teamwork - if someone comes in ED everyone comes and helps you, they know what is there role and they support us in those situations, in every situation.

I had some free accommodation over at the units for 12 months and then I brought myself a house here in town - so I'm a permanents stayer.

There s no reason not to even if you don't stay out here forever the skills you'll learn in Western LHD will be transferable back in the city and the things you'll see you'll never see anywhere else.

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Goodooga Central School is a little school way out in the never-never.

Approximately 500km from Dubbo. You've always got a home in Goodooga. It's a nice little town, very close-knit community.

We run a very big 'Transition to Work' program, that allows our students to be able to start a traineeship or an apprenticeship.

So they have the opportunity to make that part of their HSC and it also allows them to work while they're at school.

Our aim goal is to provide as many opportunities as we can for our students. Just because we are in a rural and remote area, doesn't mean that these students need to miss out.

We go down to Dubbo for five days. We pick five different places to work at.

I really liked Education Support, so the next time I went down, I did a full five days of just Education Support and they organised it so I had a traineeship. By the time I'm finished, I'll have a Cert 3 in Education Support and I'll be able to go straight into the workforce.

Aunty Karen. She's been amazing. She's like the reason that we get to do what we do. I go with the kids. I'm passionate about the kids. I love it because it's giving them opportunity. Try and get them ready for the big wide world.

She's our mum away from home when we're there. Always like going above and beyond. We need more Aunty Karens out there in the world.

A lot of our staff here have grown up in Goodooga,

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so they know the limitations of being in a rural and remote community. I'm a very proud person to call Goodooga my home. I came to this school and I've seen kids come through and their parents come through. Yeah, nothing like Goodooga Central. I am passionate about helping our Indigenous students. Like it's very good to help mob get to where they need to be and to be able to like, take care of your own like that. Like you're helping this little five year old, become the person they want to be. Five little nice words from us can make their entire day.

Through our 'Transition Pathways' program and our students achieving the HSC, we've had a 100% success rate which the whole school staff, parents, carers and community are extremely proud of. 

It's rewarding to see our students achieve and succeed. That main goal in the light of the tunnel is when they graduate on our graduation night. And that really is the proudest moment ever.

Well we're in the amazing Goodooga, we're here for the official opening of the Goodooga unit. So Goodooga is probably about a two and a half hour drive from Bourke we're probably about four and a half hours from Dubbo up towards the Queensland border so we're in quite an isolated area so these units are extremely important to have them located in these remote areas.

It's really great to have in your unit because we were living, we were in one before and wasn't as big as this in modern and new is so it's really great that we got it when we were here for operations during floods, we were actually working out of the Bowling Club.

From there they moved to a demountable building which used to be part of the Health Service and then from that space they identified that they really needed their own designated area and so therefore this is why the shed behind us has been built in the last couple of years. It's great to be here for this uh wonderful event of officially opening the Goodooga SES unit building, it's a really great asset for these local community and it's an opportunity for us to give our volunteers the resources and the facilities that they need to be able to do their job.

I now ask the commissioner and Bev to please unveil the plaque and to officially declare the building open. Thank you. Our community is a large Aboriginal community. I'd say 90 percent Aboriginal, our unit would be 98 percent Aboriginal which is fantastic because the majority of our members are local members, they're from this place they know the country, they know the river flow, they know where everything is. So when we're in operation they know how the rivers run, they know which way they want to run and where the floods are going to happen. I think the community is safe knowing that we have an SES here if floods occur they know that they're safe.