Interviews and Features

Here at Nurse Uncut, we enjoy featuring different people from a variety of medical background. In this post, we bring to you Julie, a rural midwife based in country New South Wales.

Tell me something about yourself (your family, hobbies, where you’re based)

I have been happily married for 30 years and we have two daughters who are both nursing.

We plan to semi retire in the next year or two so we can travel in our caravan

My hobbies are caravanning, bushwalking, reading and playing on the computer and of course our dogs who give us unconditional love.

I am based at Singleton Hospital and have been there for 29 years, give or take a few years when I was having my children. My role in the team is a big part of my life and I have seen many changes over the years.

How did you become a midwife? How long have you been one?

After completing my General Training at Sutherland Hospital in 1976, I traveled to WA and commenced my Midwifery training at St. John of God Subiaco. I actually met my husband while in WA and after completing my training in 1977 I moved to Mt Newman to be close to him. I worked at Mt Newman Hospital as a Midwife/RN for two years before we moved back to NSW. We traveled for a year overseas and then settled in Singleton in 1980.

What are the challenges of being a rural midwife?

There are many challenges as you must be multi-skilled in a rural hospital. Our ward is Maternity/Surgical and our skill mix is a midwife (hopefully two), RN and EEN. Sometimes the midwife may be rostered with two EEN’s, meaning she is the only RM/RN on that shift. We have 6 Maternity beds, 2 Birthing Suites and 13 – 16 general beds. Our patients may include Antenatal, postnatal, surgical, medical, aged care and children.

We have Antenatal shared care/booking in clinics, Parenting Education Classes and do antenatal assessment on any woman who presents from early pregnancy to birth. We work closely with our visiting GP obstetricians as we have no RMO’s or staff specialists on site.

Besides working in our unit, we may also be required to work in A&E, Day Surgery, Recovery and occasionally in the Medical Ward.

So you can see that we must be multi skilled.

What are the rewards? What do you love most about being a midwife?

Sharing such a special part of mothers, partners and families lives and giving them the support to empower them through their labour and postnatal period.

Supporting them through the happy and sad times.

Is there a difference between a rural and urban midwife? If yes, what are they?

We all want the same outcomes, but having worked for a short time in an urban hospital, where you are either in Birthing Suite, Nursery or Postnatal wards, I find it very rewarding to be able to care for a mother throughout her stay with us.

In a rural area, especially when you are part of the community we often meet the mothers and families at the local shops. Many times I am stopped and shown the baby, and thankfully they understand when I can’t remember names but mostly I do recognize the mother or father’s faces.

Can you share the most unforgettable experience you have as a midwife — it could be an example of a patient whose baby almost died or something that depicts human strength in times of adversity sort of thing.

There are numerous memories, some sad many happy. But I think the team work that is involved when we have a retrieval. From the moment that the decision is made and the retrieval team is contacted we all work as a team, whether it is the EN who is left to care for the other patients on the ward, the on call midwife who comes when needed, the PSS staff who supply refreshments, the orderly who turns the lights on for the helicopter (if at night) or meets them and brings them to Labour Ward or nursery, the GP who is making decisions in sometimes difficult circumstances and the midwife who is caring for the baby, mother, father and extended family. We all give a collective sigh of relief when the Retrieval team arrives then we offer as much assistance as required while they are stabilizing the baby for transfer.

What is midwifery nirvana for you meaning if you could have a wish list of what you’d like in your job, what would that wish list look like?

Gosh the list could go on forever but I suppose for the rural areas it would be:

More choices for rural mothers

We have recently started a Share care clinic to allow women the choice of visiting with a midwife on a regular basis, working with the GP Obstetricians. We have taken on an education role supplying information and education on pregnancy, labour, birth, breastfeeding. We also do psychosocial assessments and refer when necessary. This has allowed our mothers to meet some of the midwives. This has been a pleasant change for the mothers as well as the midwives giving us the opportunity to better meet their needs.

Mothers in rural areas often have to travel for higher level care. If we could offer more choices in the local area this would allow women to birth close to their families. This doesn’t mean the complicated high risk pregnancy but just normal low risk pregnancies.

More midwives.

It is an ongoing battle the last few years in rural areas as well as urban to meet the staff shortages of both midwives and nurses. We are attempting to overcome this problem by employing student midwives who do some placements at the tertiary hospitals to gain experience in high risk pregnancies and births but the majority of their time is with us at Singleton.

How did you find out about Nurse Uncut?

The Lamp

What do you want to get most out of Nurse Uncut?

Just read and communicate with other nurses & midwives, hear their stories, laugh and cry with them.

This year, over 189 photos were submitted to the Labour Photo of the Year 2009 competition. And, out of over 3,000 votes, this photo called “Manual Labour” by KM Asad got the most number of votes. Also, these were the three judges for the competition: – Mac Urata, David Bacon and Gretchen Donart.

So, we thought it might be a good idea to share with you a quick interview with the winner, KM Asad (slightly edited for publication) -

KM Asad is a 25-year-old photographer from Bangladesh.

What inspired you to take this photo?

Bangladesh is a poor country in the world. I think that the first and most important thing is education. If a country’s children do not get education, this country won’t improve and develop. For this reason, I decided to take this photo to show awareness for our country’s people.

What do you hope to impart with this photo?

I want that my country will one day experience what it’s like to be a free world.

How did you find out about the Labour Photo of the Year Contest? How do you feel about winning it?

Last year, the 2008 runner up photographer was Khaled Hasan. He is my close friend. He told me about this contest.

I really want to say that it is a great win for me, and it gives speed in my photography.

Thank you very much, K.M. Asad! We really appreciate the time that you’ve given us here at NU. And, we wish you well!

If you’re interested in contact KM Asad for purchasing his photography, you may do so via his Flickr account or by email (asad_chobi [@] yahoo . com).

To see more about the photography contest, visit http://www.labourstart.org/lpoty.

* Photo published with permission from the photographer (KM Asad).

I recently heard Dominique Grubisa speak at a seminar in Sydney. I thought she had a lot to offer with her unique strategies to conquer debt, so much so that I invited Dominique to speak at a seminar in Orange that I organised for last Sunday.

It was a lot of work and had me operating outside my comfort zone but the positive feedback from the participants made it all worthwhile.

I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce Dominique to you.

1. In true microblogging fashion, can you please describe yourself in 140
characters or less? I am a barrister, writer, property investor and mother of three. I have been on an emotional and financial roller coaster over the last five years and lived to tell the story. I am now dedicated to helping others, not just survive but thrive during the Global Financial Crisis.
2. How and why did you get in to your chosen profession? I became a barrister out of spite when I couldn’t get a job as a solicitor. I resolved that I’d be better than all of them. When I began to make money, I flew too close to the sun by betting too heavily on property, only to find myself on the verge of bankruptcy – which brought me to my current business: helping people turn their lives around financially. I realised that my legal and commercial skills could assist people fighting their own financial wars.

3. Who is your biggest inspiration in life? For me it was Donald Trump. I read the “Art of the Comeback” when I was circling the drain financially and it gave me the resolve to just keep on going. Donald Trump is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as having the biggest financial turnaround ever. I thought if he could go from $900 million in the red to billions in the black in a matter of years then my debt problem was chump change.

4. What is the best advice you’ve ever received? “The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn” Donald Trump.

We should expect problems in life, they come with the territory, it is not the problem which matters, it is our reaction to it.

In other words – never give up, just keep moving forwards towards your goal.

5. If you can give one advice to someone just starting out in the same
profession as you, what advice would you give? Get out of law NOW – run for your life!
6. Can you tell us what else are you interested in? Any hobbies/passions
outside of your work? Family and good food. I love to cook and entertain or just spend time with family eating. I’d love to say that sport or exercise were my passion, but sadly it’s food!

7. What’s (or where’s) the best holiday you’ve ever had? Any holiday where the kids have a great time. Which is basically anywhere with a kid’s club. We went to Indonesia last Christmas and the resort had a kids club and water slides and movies and a dsco for them at night. Happy kids mean happy parents.

8. What do you think of online social networking? Are you part of Twitter,
Facebook, etc? Why or why not? Yes I am. I used to think it was a joke and just for teenagers and the whole thing scared me a bit but now I realised that it’s here to stay and that it is the way the world is now doing business and as Darwin said “It’s not the smartest or the strongest who survive, but those who are the most responsive to change.”

If the way of the future is online social marketing then bring it on!

9. Do you have a favourite toy/gadget? What is it and why do you like it? My laptop. I never thought I’d be a computer geek but once I’m online the world could end and I wouldn’t notice – the only thing that reminds me that hours have passed are hunger pains!

10. Anything else you’d like to share? I think information is power and forewarned is forearmed when it comes to knowledge of the law and your rights. I am therefore going to put together a free webinar* for the readers of Nurse Uncut to share all of my secrets for tackling debt.

Dominique has kindly offered to make her time available to us in the upcoming webinar for our Nurse Uncut readers and to ensure you get the maximum benefit from this opportunity are there any particular issues relating to personal or business related debt or dealing/negotiating with banks and lenders that you would like Dominique to cover? Your family and friends will also be able to join us on the upcoming webinar.

Thanks Rich

*Webinar: A LIVE meeting or seminar that is conducted over the internet where attendees are invited via email to log in. The presenter’s voice is heard live and the presenter can show a power point presentation. Attendees can click a button to raise their hand to ask a question. To get onto a webinar you first register online and are emailed a link so you can join the webinar at the time it is scheduled to run.