Gulargambone

(Music)

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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[Sonia Bonham - Gilgandra Hospital, Regional Nurse Education Western NSW LHD]

The modules, uh it's a framework so if someone entered into our facility and was starting the ARGN program, they would enrol online through My Health Learning and get access to a workbook and some learning modules and some videos and when they were happy that they understood the content then an educator like myself or a CNE would come out to the sites and we'd work one-on-one and just go through their understanding of that and do a verification to make sure that they're at a standard a level of adept, that then provided them with these skills to be able to work autonomously in our facilities, but part of a team.

[Isabella Dark - Registered Nurse, Gilgandra Hospital]

It's an amazing change. I didn't think that I would like it at the beginning but moved out here and within a month I knew that I wanted to stay and not go home, so just branch out and have a go. It's easy to make friends, get involved in the community. It's great, everyone's welcoming, it's a great change so if you're considering it, do it.

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[Music]

I think like for example the water tank is the arbor Condors and I'm pretty good because well it's basically a picture of a Kingfisher but it's a myth.  

You can't quantify what it does but it inspires people with lifts them and it leaves something that they can enjoy and own for a long long time, which is great.

paint all the buildings and all the people will come, art changes the world, art will bring the people and it will engage the local population and educate the children.

[Music]

It's been fabulous and I think not only for our kids who are talking about it at school and talking about what they see after school, it's given the town a really good vibe and a buzz that I haven't seen before.

With the quality of the artists brought, a lot of these guys and got you know national recognition it's not international recognition.

It's definitely what Gular needs you know, even myself many a time I’ve travelled through, rather than pulling up, I think this is definitely what they need to stop people and get them to spend a bit on money in town.

Yeah the whole community seriously just put their back into this and really they believe in their town and that's really special

You know all the kids are coming out and they're sort of getting a bit of a spark about them and the adults are walking around all puffed up that their towns getting sort of tart it up and it and it just looks good.

So it's given the community a great lift.  street art is the biggest most important art movement in the world at the moment and it changes towns and whole populations, businesses and so many things.

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It's actually a Wedgetail Eagle and it's the totem with the Weilwan people so I thought that’s going to be sort of appropriate.

Kids often don't get opportunities to travel to bigger centres where they see artists like this so it's really important for them to take up this opportunity when they can.

Kids are such natural artists and so you do this stuff in Sydney or in the city and kids walk past and they're sort of like oh yeah, but you know out in the bush they really appreciate it .

I've got lots of little kids draw pictures of Emus and send me stuff now online, that's it's really good at touching you know and I want to be an artist and I want to paint Emus and everything, so you are getting across to these kids.

We got a couple school kids and it was quite good that I actually knew, well they did Aboriginal studies in schools now,  so back in my day they didn't, so it's quite good that they know from an early age,  that back in the traditional days I think they would have learned that at an early time as well.

I think I tapped into some of the knowledge that they already have about painting and we collaborated and just had a great time with it, it was really perfect.

I think the border community needs time a little more about our culture and what have you.

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