She is a faith community nurse for her church, works on short-term contracts as a casual and relief review co-ordinator for home care organisations, and volunteers in Cambodia in her spare time. The registered general obstetric nurse still has an active annual practicing certificate from the Nursing Council and has been nursing for 58 years.

Jenkins trained as a nurse and midwife, delivering babies for 23 years before becoming divisional nurse manager of obstetrics at National Women’s Hospital.

She was headhunted to set up home care organisations, and spent 20 years on the job. Home care organisations continue to contract her – and as long as the work keeps coming, she plans to keep going.

Betty Jenkins in the 1960s, practising nursing at a private hospital. Photo / Supplied

Jenkins credits her personal spiritual beliefs for keeping her working. “I never could find the word retirement in The Bible,” she said.

“I think we’ve become programmed to think retirement is on a certain date … but we’re living more healthily and for longer. Some people can’t keep working, but as long as you can I think one should do so.”

Jenkins also volunteers as a faith community nurse at her West Auckland church, promoting “individual and community health and wellbeing” through counselling, health checks and referrals.

She lives by the mantra of “use it or lose it”.

“Quite often I’ve seen with elderly clients that if they stop work, the first two to three months aren’t bad, but one day they wake up and what have they got?

“The problem is you have a job because you need money – but we have work because we need a purpose.”

Jenkins at a water filter installation, set up in partnership with Never Thirst in a village in the Stung Treng Province, Cambodia. Photo / Supplied

In 1992, Jenkins went to Cambodia to volunteer with a non-profit group called Asian Outreach which was taking a mobile clinic along the Mekong River.

She has been back almost every year for at least three weeks, involved in community development, clean water and sanitation, and helping school kids get an education.

Last year she went to Cambodia three times; another trip is planned in October.

“I’ve decided I’ll keep going if people ask me – the last two contracts they approached me and I’m happy to do it.

“But I told my family – please tell me if you think I’m losing it. I don’t want to be a nurse that’s a burden on anybody else.”

Mike Griffiths, the pastor of Elim City Church in Auckland, where Betty is a member, values the health promotion events that Betty, as a faith community nurse, has led. One of the attendees at a health promotion event was prompted by Betty to visit his GP and is now receiving treatment for a newly discovered cancer.

Ian Yost of VisionWest Baptist Homecare has worked with Jenkins off and on for a decade. He said colleagues describe Jenkins as “a legend” – although she denies that.

“I think you don’t become a legend until after you die. However I think what gives me some satisfaction is, if I’ve touched a life in some way that has benefited them, and enabled them to develop their potential, then that’s a job well done.”

BETTY’S TIPS FOR NEVER QUITTING WORK

• Believe you’re never going to retire – you’ll always be doing something
• Maintain a positive outlook at all times – but you will need to adapt as you get older. If there’s something you can’t do any more, do something else
• Never stop learning or looking for new experiences
• Change should always be welcomed as it stimulates the brain
• Involve yourself with all ages across the spectrum
• Healthy relationships are important for physical and mental wellbeing
• Never lose your sense of humour

That included three major deployments to Somalia, Afghanistan and East Timor during her 28-year career with the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps and Air Force.

Ms Telford, 57, has held 16 different roles during her military career, beginning at Waiouru Military Camp in 1985 and rising through the ranks from lieutenant to squadron leader.

She has worked as a trauma nurse and Defence Health Services school instructor, and also as a flight nurse bringing sick and injured service personnel back home for urgent treatment.

Ms Telford said her first deployment was as a member of the Kiwi contingent arriving in Somalia in late 1993, not long after two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down.

“When we landed in Somalia, I thought, ‘Oh my God where have I come to?’ The heat was unbearable, 40 degrees plus, and the basis infrastructure in the area was crap,” she said.

Ms Telford said the deployment was “exciting and scary” at the same time, and carrying a semi-automatic weapon around was standard kit for her and other medical staff.

“But Somalia is no different today, with its war lords, corruption and poverty,” she said.

Afghanistan was Ms Telford’s last deployment primarily as a member of a medical reconnaissance team, and she was also deployed to Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

In 2010 the Wellington-born-and-trained registered nurse headed a project – which was also her brainchild – to convert a Boeing 757 into a flying hospital.

Following her retirement from the Defence Force, she worked as a co-ordinator at Hilda Ross Hospital in Hamilton, after which she became clinical manager at Oceania Health Care in Cambridge.

Needing more work-life balance, Ms Telford decided to enter the aged care sector and a move to Tauranga beckoned.

After selling her Cambridge home last year, Ms Telford found a “little slice of paradise” in Papamoa Beach and secured her “dream job” working for the Stroke Foundation.

Ms Telford said her new role included going into the homes of stroke survivors assessing their rehabilitation needs and also giving comfort and support to their families.

“It’s a radical change from caring for sick and injured service personnel, but it’s a role I’m relishing, and it’s a chance to give back to the community,” she said.

Stroke Foundation chief executive officer Mark Vivian said it was fantastic to have Ms Telford on board.

“She not only brings an amazing wealth of expertise and experience, she obviously feels strongly about her work and wants to help people,” he said.

Remember the Stroke’s Foundations FAST campaign

FACE – Is someone’s face drooping on one side? Can they smile?

ARM – Is one arm weak? Can they raise both arms?

SPEECH – Is someone’s speech jumbled or slurred? Can they speak at all?

TIME – Having a stroke is a medical emergency. Act FAST, call 111.

He was in Kabul and – though he wasn’t allowed to give details in the closing chapters of his book –  it is clear from media reports at the time that he was in hearing distance of an attack on a military hospital that left about 50 people dead.

The Red Cross nurse was only in Kabul as weeks earlier an aid convoy had been ambushed on its way north killing six Red Cross workers and two more were presumed abducted. So Red Cross activities had been suspended and he and others on assignment around Afghanistan had been called back to the capital.

At the same time the Kiwi nurse – a veteran of humanitarian missions from war-torn Yemen to Ebola-ravaged Sierra Leone and of isolated nursing posts in Australia’s tropical far north to his current post in Birdsville in Australia’s arid heartland – was proofing and writing the final chapter of his book that is being launched next week.

It is all a long way from when the 19-year-old welder decided to give nursing a go and started training at Hutt Hospital as the only bloke amongst 43 women in the days when male nurses had separate registration and weren’t welcome on the maternity award. (See 2012 Nursing Review profile of Cameron)

He crossed the Tasman to train as registered midwife and since about 1990 Australia has been his nursing base, though he co-owns a farm in the Hawke’s Bay with his brother and it was through the New Zealand Red Cross that he went on his first assignment in 2006 to Kenya to treat the war-wounded from Sudan’s civil war. The Kiwi has continued to work with New Zealand Red Cross ever since on assignments that have taken him to Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, South Ossetia, Sierra Leone and South Sudan – the setting for many yarns in his book that are sobering and sad as well as full of the camaraderie and humanitarian spirit that keeps him returning to some of the world’s most challenged countries.

Along the way he has acquired his nursing degree and masters degree in tropical health and was awarded Australian Nurse of the Year in 2004, the Florence Nightingale Medal (the International Red Cross’s highest award) in 2011 and the Order of Australia in 2013 for his nursing services both around the world and in isolated Australian communities.

His forthcoming book A Nurse on the Edge of the Desert (From Birdsville to Kandahar: the art of extreme nursing) has brought him back to Wellington where he is steeling himself for the book launch on August 7 and related media events. “I don’t really like this sort of thing.”

Understatement is the norm for this humble man who celebrated his 60^th birthday and the New Year in a sandbagged barracks in southern Afghanistan missing his family in Germany and the garden he’s carefully nurtured in the hot and arid desert heart of Australia that is his current home.

That Afghanistan assignment was of course cut short and after a brief sojourn in Kabul, then Tajikistan and a debriefing in Red Cross headquarters in Geneva he was able to spend some time in Germany with his doctor wife Daniela and daughters Emily, 19, and Josephine, 17.

Birdsville – the races, grey nomads and desert

Last month Cameron returned to his desert garden in Birdsville, Queensland where he has been the nursing leader for the town’s two nurse outback clinic since July 2014.

Winter is the busiest time in the township on the edge of the Simpson Desert which has reached a sweltering 49.5 degrees on more than one occasion but in winter it is a more civilised mid-20s and the ‘grey nomads’ in their campervans, utes and caravans, or just utes and tents start arriving having driven the 1,200 km north from Adelaide or 1,600 kilometres east from state capital Brisbane.

They arrive in their droves in early September when the township hosts the famous Birdsville Races which swells the population from its usual 150 people to 8000 plus.

The clinic’s two nurses usually are on rotating shift to serve the isolated population spread across the outlying stations but are joined by other outback staff  for the three day racing carnival. The nurses brace themselves for the unknown – which can range from car accidents to boxing ring injuries – to the expected ‘grey nomads’ who arrive without medications, and seem surprised that the outback town doesn’t have a fully-stocked pharmacy, as well as the after-hours calls from the Birdsville Hotel that somebody has “had a bit of a turn”.  The Flying Doctor Service is also on hand to evacuate any emergencies in race time or any other time of the year.

Treating the Ebola dead with respect and dignity

Just a few months after arriving in Birdsville the Red Cross put out a call for workers to help contain the devastating Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

It was not a popular assignment but Cameron quickly put up his hand to work in the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kenema, Sierra Leone – and signed his first Red Cross contract stipulating that if he died while on duty his body wouldn’t be brought home – the highly infectious haemorrhagic disease was most contagious at the point a person died.

So it was a mixed blessing that on arrival he found his ‘thin face’ meant he couldn’t get the required tight fit of the goggles needed to work safely with contagious patients. As instead he was assigned to help discharge back to the villages the half of the admitted patients who survived – and arrange the burials of the half that died. “It was very intense,” says Cameron but he says the level of human kindness and dignified care offered to the ill, dying and saved was “extraordinarily high” by all involved.

He had the heart-breaking work of supervising the digging of graves and arranging simple respectful funerals for the about “150 poor souls” who perished during the six weeks he was there. Conscious of the country’s history as a homeland for repatriated slaves he said it didn’t feel right “for the white boss to sit in the shade” watching the African team bury their dead. So, even though 40 years old than some of them, he also picked up a pick-axe and joined them in digging graves in the rock-hard soil.

About 150 survivors were also sent home but a social worker was always sent in advance to the village to tell them to welcome the survivor home as a hero and not to shun or fear them because their immunity probably made them the safest person to be around.

He says in his book that it was hard to say why such work was so satisfying. “I think I got almost as much satisfaction from knowing that those who had died were treated with respect as I did from sending the lucky ones home.”

Word had got out in Birdsville about what he’d been up to while away and “funnily enough” there appeared to be a downturn in demand for the nurse fresh back from Sierra Leone for a month or two…

Cameron is in Wellington for next week’s launch and returns in time to tend his garden and prepare for the influx of grey nomads for this year’s races on Saturday September 1.

The farm girl from Southland seems a rural nurse natural but confesses that right up until the final year of her nursing degree, back in 2010, she wasn’t convinced that nursing was even for her.

Working under some “amazing” West Coast rural nurse specialists in Reefton for her final clinical placement changed her mind and she set her sights on giving rural nursing a go if she ever got the chance.

About five years later she was practice nursing in Cairns when she spotted the Colville Community Health Centre ad for a ‘practice nurse’ serving the top half of the Coromandel peninsula.

It was during her Skype interview that she first got an inkling that the job was not a typical practice nurse position.

“They call it practice-slash-district-slash-palliative-slash-public health-slash-after-hours-slash-PRIME nurse.” (She also discovered later that different funding contracts for many of those ‘hats’ can create some tricky fee decisions and complex paper trails – particularly as it is possible for a patient to end up seeing the same nurse wearing three different hats.)

On Emma’s first day in 2015 – fresh from the tropics to mid-winter Coromandel – she quickly got a taste of one of her many hats. The ambulance pager went off and as she ran after the nurse she discovered the ambulance’s home was a hayshed. Emma knew she had definitely shifted worlds.

Chances for orientation were limited – one week after starting she was sent south for her PRIME (Primary Response in Medical Emergencies) training in readiness for being on-call on an ‘eight days on six days off’ roster rotation with the centre’s other nurse.

“I probably came away frightened more than anything,” recalls Emma. “I was thinking ‘am I going to have to use this often?’ – luckily I haven’t.”

She says it took about six months for her to get her head around her many roles including heading out on ambulance callouts with the St Johns volunteer first responder – which in summer can happen up to three times a day.

In the winter the Colville Community Health Centre serves a community of 700 but in summer that swells to about 10,000. Emma says it is an ongoing battle with the district health board for recognition of the pressures that summer tourists bring. Offering after hours services to the holiday crowds can see summer working days stretch from 8.30am to 7pm – as well as being on-call overnight. Though Emma says the centre’s supportive GP will step in and do a night duty when nurses have had a long day and a disrupted night.

One afterhours call she took recently was not only not local but out to sea. Someone in a boat off the coast had had a fishhook to the eyeball and the family calculated Colville was the closest medical centre. A bizarre couple of hours followed for Emma pouring over maps trying to find the closest landing for the family to sail to, meeting them at the wharf and confirming the Westpac helicopter was needed for an urgent transfer to Waikato Hospital. (Calling in helicopters is not uncommon in a community cut off by floods and slips two or three times a year.)

Emma says clinically getting up to speed as a nurse working in rural isolation was one task – adjusting to the blurring of boundaries you face was another. Her commitment to rural nursing has seen her studying for a postgraduate rural nursing diploma, give volunteer hours to investigating a purpose-built health facility for Colville and joining rural nursing colleagues in kickstarting a rural nurse survey and working group (see online news story at www.nursingreview.co.nz).

But the south has called her back and she leaves Colville this winter to take up a rural nurse specialist position for the Southern DHB. And she is excited that this nursing job will not only have her changing hats but also islands – in this case Stewart Island and her native Southland on the Mainland.

Resources

• Rural Nurses NZ Facebook page www.facebook.com/groups/440474582969538
• New Zealand Rural General Practice Network www.rgpn.org.nz
• New Zealand Rural Hospital Network www.nzrhn.co.nz

See related stories:

Island nurses: rural doyennes

The ‘accidental’ rural hospital nurse

Fate had other plans and in her early 30s she followed her partner to Alexandra and the nurse, who had only ever worked in city hospitals, found herself two and a half hours drive from both Dunedin and Invercargill.

But just down the road in Clyde was the community-owned Dunstan Hospital and she thought, ‘why not, they only planned to be there for a couple of years’.

“But 10 years later we are still here,” laughs Michelle. “I came to really love working in a rural hospital and the variety of skills that you need.”

She is now an associate charge nurse at Dunstan whose facilities include a 24-acute-bed ward (including a three-bed, high-dependency unit) and provides secondary health services to around 25,000 people in the Central Otago and Wanaka regions (plus tourists in the busy summer months).

Michelle admits that she used to be one of those urban nurses who wondered what rural hospital nurses actually got up to. That was quickly replaced by feeling quite overwhelmed by the knowledge and skills required to care for acute patients across the age spectrum.

“When you first start, you feel ‘I’ve got to be an expert in all these things’,” recalls Michelle. “But then you realise you don’t have to be an expert in everything, you just have to know a lot about everything and some things you might know more about than others. And you become the ‘generalist specialist’ that rural nursing requires.”

Michelle says Dunstan’s HDU beds may have patients with acute coronary syndrome, severe infections or respiratory illnesses (requiring non-invasive ventilation). In the 21 other beds are medical patients, rehabilitation patients (often recovering from hip or knee surgery in Dunedin), palliative patients and children with a variety of illnesses. Michelle adds that high demand and a growing population means it can often have more patients than the funded and staffed acute beds – an issue, along with ongoing other funding dilemmas, that the community hospital is trying to address.

The hospital has no emergency department but can have patients arriving at all hours by ambulance or self-referral. Storms and winter weather mean immediate transfers aren’t always an option for the critically ill or injured. Recently one patient being choppered to the only ICU bed available between Christchurch and Invercargill had to return to Dunstan in the wee hours as the weather was too atrocious for the helicopter to continue.

Michelle says it is situations like this that bring home the difference between nursing in an urban setting, where a specialist or ICU is just down the corridor, to a rural setting where “it’s just us” – your fellow ‘generalist specialist’ doctors and nurses you can turn to for help.

“But I think there’s still a perception out there that we don’t do a lot,” laughs Michelle. “I think a lot of people who have never worked in a rural area think it’s like an upskilled rest home or something. I never knew what people did either.”

Making more visible the work of rural nurses, and rural hospital nurses in particular, saw Dunstan Hospital nursing leaders Debi Lawry and Rhonda Johnson recently help kickstart a nationwide rural nurse survey and working group (see online news story at
www.nursingreview.co.nz).

Michelle is an urban convert to rural ‘generalist specialist’ nursing who takes pride in providing a great service to her adopted community. And, apart from missing the shopping, she is also a convert to small town life who – when not busy studying for her postgraduate diploma – loves being able to run and mountain bike in the Central Otago great outdoors. In fact, if she moves again it might be to an even smaller town “just to push the boundaries a bit”.

Resources

• Rural Nurses NZ Facebook page www.facebook.com/groups/440474582969538
• New Zealand Rural General Practice Network www.rgpn.org.nz
• New Zealand Rural Hospital Network www.nzrhn.co.nz

See related stories:
Island nurses: rural doyennes
Rapid hat-changing on the Coromandel

For more than 30 years the rural nurse specialists and midwives have cared for generations of residents of the rugged and remote island, 100 kilometres off the mainland. They have birthed their babies, attended their emergencies and washed and dressed their dead.

Along the way they have gained their master’s degrees, co-founded a company to deliver and develop the island’s primary health service and most recently become published authors with the release of their book Island Nurses.

The book tells some intrepid tales, including those of comforting a trapped car accident victim as the tide creeps quietly higher, struggling through a raupo swamp to reach plane crash victims, and birthing a baby on a boat.

It also shares stories of late night callouts when Leonie’s toddler children were bundled into blankets and put to sleep on the health centre floor, facing their own health battles and the grief of farewelling patients who are also friends.

The pair say it has been both a privilege and empowering to have their nursing lives interwoven with the lives of the families they have lived and worked with for decades on Aotea (Great Barrier Island).

So interwoven, in fact, that for years the living room of Leonie and her GP husband Ivan doubled as the waiting room for the island’s practice rooms – a caravan parked outside their front door. And Adele laughs that, in time, her mussel farmer husband Shannon adjusted to being known as the ‘nurse’s husband’.

Adele and Shannon arrived on the island in 1985, when Adele took up the post as the public health nurse in the ‘nurse’s cottage’ at the north of the island – in those years about an hour by car away from a part-time emergency nurse and Ivan the GP who were based in the south.

Leonie’s arrival was a love story. A chance meeting in 1986 with former workmate Ivan, during a summer yachting trip to Aotea, saw her wooed from across the waters and by the end of the year she was both an island nurse and the doctor’s wife.

In their book Leonie and Adele talk about rural nursing as ‘knowing’ – not only knowing a place and its people but becoming part of it. Being an integral part of the Barrier and surrounding islands’ hardy population of around 1,000 people means maintaining professional boundaries is never clear cut for Leonie, Adele and the rest of the island’s nursing team delivering antenatal to palliative care and everything in between.

“It’s completely impossible to be black and white about boundaries – you have to have fluid boundaries,” says Adele. “And to know how to move across those boundaries and be a friend one moment and a professional the next.”

Leonie, whose master’s dissertation looked at what it means to be a rural nurse, says for rural nurses it is not only a case of knowing but also being known.

“Rural people like to be cared for by people they know and who they trust,” says Leonie. “Living in the goldfish bowl of rural life means they know you warts and all – and that allows them to build up that trust with you.”

In return the caring professionals say the caring is far from one way as the islanders care for and value their nurses. Be it gifts of seafood or wild pork delivered to the back door or Adele recovering from cancer surgery on the mainland surrounded by vases of flowers from the islanders and a boxful of get well cards from the local school.

The pair say an important step for both their professional development and the community’s health services was the setting up, in the midst of the 1990s health reforms, their company Aotea Health (in partnership with Ivan). “One of the reasons we set up Aotea Health was that we could get control of the (health funding) money and direct the services to areas that were important for rural people rather than being squashed into an urban model,” says Adele.

“Evolving a whole service for the islanders – that has just been great to be part of,” adds Leonie.

That service also reflects that the hardy islanders’ notion of health often differs from their urban counterparts. The worried well are few and far between. And you can’t make assumptions, as they know a local digger driver who has a master’s degree and a company director who left school at 15. Many of the pair’s rural patients also consider themselves well as long as they can still carry on and do their normal day-to-day activities. Likewise evacuating an islander off to the Mainland is not done lightly.

The pair knows the logistical, and emotional, challenges of being separated from family, farm, animals and friends so the health team will go the extra mile to try and treat or stabilise a patient first before phoning for a helicopter.

That deep commitment to the island and its islanders shines in Leonie and Adele’s book Island Nurses, which to their delight is “absolutely loved” by the community.

“The community say it’s a document that encapsulates who they are,” says Leonie. A community they know with the “special kind of knowing of a rural nurse”, a knowing that is “as much in the heart as in the head”.

Resources

• Rural Nurses NZ Facebook page www.facebook.com/groups/440474582969538
• New Zealand Rural General Practice Network www.rgpn.org.nz
• New Zealand Rural Hospital Network www.nzrhn.co.nz

See related stories:

The ‘accidental’ rural hospital nurse

Rapid hat-changing on the Coromandel

ED nurse and racing car driver Alex Clark loves the rush of not knowing what’s around the corner.

When Alex Clark grabs a break from a stressful ED shift, she pictures herself putting the ‘pedal to the metal’ around a racetrack.

“It is quite calming – I know most people wouldn’t think that. But I guess it is like a meditation… and that’s also what I do when I’m readying to race.”

The alter ego of this 25-year-old Middlemore emergency department nurse is a BMW racing car driver, who this season took out her first victory on the track.

This may not be the stress release you would expect from a nurse who sees the aftermath of road crashes, but Clark says the sport she loves is safe. And both her job and hobby are good fits for a young woman who has come to realise that she thrives on adrenalin.

Clark grew up around motor racing. With a dad who dabbled in racing Minis when she was a little girl and a grandad who raced, she spent a lot of time as a kid at Western Springs Speedway. So when seven years ago her father once again got back on the racetrack in the BMW Race Driver series, the then-19-year-old nursing student took the chance to try it for herself.

Once she got behind the wheel during a motor sport fun day she fell in love with the technical demands and concentration that racing demands, as well as the buzz it provides.

The rush Clark got from the racetrack made her realise that she was more of an adrenalin junkie than she had ever thought. “I think it must definitely be in the blood.”

Nursing was also in the blood, with her mother being a nurse. Her career choice was sealed by seeing how well the nurses cared for her grandfather during his frequent hospital stays at the end of his life.

ED was not her first choice on graduating from AUT in mid-2014 – that was paediatrics – but the rush of never knowing what was around the corner appealed, so she applied successfully for a new graduate place at Middlemore Hospital’s ED.

“And I can’t imagine doing anything else. Every day is different, every patient is different and in every presentation the condition is different. I like that change – the not knowing is a big drawcard for me, as well as the adrenalin when the ambulances radio ahead with an ‘R40’ and you think ‘oh, what is coming in?’ And you try to stay calm while being absolutely terrified inside.”

Adrenalin is something her job shares with her hobby. “I’m an adrenalin junkie – I never thought I would be, but I am.”

Clark’s first motor racing season was six years ago after a family friend, former motorsport champion Todd Pelham, helped to prepare her for her debut on the BMW Race Driver Series. First up she had to qualify by racing around the track against “big, fast, scary cars”, getting up to around 180 kilometres per hour.

“Terrifying, but so exhilarating!”

Clark raced for three years with the support of her family ‘pit crew’ then, after two seasons off, she started racing again for the 2016-17 season. The season kicked off well, with her first ever victory in the 2 Litre category of the Castrol BMW Race Driver Series held at Hampton Downs’ race circuit in September.

Feeling safe

As an ED nurse Clark sees the aftermath of crashes on the road but says she feels very safe in her racing car on the track.

“Motor racing is so safe nowadays. I have all the safety gear – the belts, a roll cage and special neck restraints – so I’m at very little risk of being badly injured. Driving on the general road in a general road car is actually probably more dangerous.”

But she adds that being an ED nurse has put her off riding a motorcycle again.

“And I can’t watch motorcycle racing – it terrifies me as all I can see is the injuries that can happen,” she says.

So what do her ED colleagues think of her racing? “Most of them don’t know,” she laughs. “The ones who do know think I’m mad.”

But Clark highly recommends that other nurses give this meditative and addictive sport a spin.

PHOTO COURTESY OF GEOFF RIDDER

Mindful motorbiking

Kate Gibb, a nursing director for older people’s health, is a born-again biker who is totally smitten with her new motorcycle.

Kate Gibb admits she turns a few heads when she rocks up in her bike leathers to work meetings.

She doesn’t do it often, but if she has a meeting on her way home she will ask to be excused her for turning up in her leathers with a helmet over her arm.

Since getting back into motorcycling three years ago and buying her dream bike only last year, the director of nursing for older people’s health for the Canterbury District Health Board chooses two wheels over four wheels as often as she can.

And after a hiatus of seven or eight years without a motorcycle, this born-again biker wonders how she let herself go so long without an activity that she finds so good for her wellbeing.

Gibb first became hooked on riding dirt bikes around a cousin’s farm as a kid and took it up again in her early 20s. Her first motorcycle was a 250cc – the largest you could ride at the time on your learner’s licence.

“It was a little old dunger and I ended up taking it to bits in the garage for quite some time. And then we moved house and I couldn’t remember how to put it back together. So we ended up selling that one for parts.”

Without a motorbike to progress through to her full bike licence, however, motorbiking just fell off her radar over time.

But three years ago Gibb bought a Suzuki GSX 650cc and started progressing through her licence again. “It took me 19 years to go from my learner’s to my full licence,” laughs Gibb. “I finally got it just last year.”

Meditation on wheels

As soon as she got her full licence, Gibb got her dream bike – a Triumph Street Triple R 675cc – the bike she had been coveting since it first came onto the market in 2008. She says it is light, quick, nifty and just the perfect fun package. “It just flies around the race track.”

She says that the few times she has taken her bike around a track she has had so much fun she is very tempted to enter a race, but meanwhile she just enjoys track training days.

“It is very meditative,” says Gibb. “Total mindfulness, it really is – you must be so fully focused and can’t think of anything else. Particularly on the track as you are fully concentrating on hitting your lines perfectly and everything else goes out of your head – it is just the most beautiful, serene concentration with all the power and exhilaration at the same time.”

Riding on the road is admittedly less meditative as you need to focus on the other traffic, but Gibbs says that making sure she gets plenty of time on her bike is one of her key ways to wellbeing. “It’s sort of a unique regenerative kind of activity.”

Bike shop owners no longer do a double take if a woman turns up to buy parts, with motorbiking now an activity being taken up by a growing number of women.

But there is always the safety issue. Gibb acknowledges that motorcylists are more vulnerable on a motorbike than in a car.

“You’ve just got to do your best to make sure you’re riding safely and defensively, and there are some really fantastic safety initiatives since I’ve come back to riding.”

One of these initiatives is the excellent ACC-supported Ride Forever training programme (see resources box for details).

Bikers also need to invest in the best protective gear they can get their hands on and wear it, says Gibb.

“But at the end of the day you do need to accept that at any time somebody can come out at you and, if something does go wrong, you are more vulnerable.”

Gibb says that she actually feels safer on her motorbike than she does on a bicycle. And she adds that people can also get a false sense of security in a car.

“I’m not denying there isn’t a significant risk …but I love it so much that I’m prepared to take the risk.”

And Gibb says she has given some more passive and less risky ‘ways to wellbeing’ a go. “For a while I thought I should try mindful colouring or whatever you call it. But it didn’t quite ring the bell for me…”

Whereas time on her bike… well, that’s the ultimate stress-buster and path to relaxation for this nurse leader.

Bucking convention

Massey nursing school head Dr Mark Jones reflects on how his first schoolboy motorbike back in England gave him his nursing vocation and a lifelong passion for bikes and, eventually, bike safety too.

My Anglican minister dad’s plan was that shifting to a new parish was a good time for me to shift to a new school.

I wasn’t so convinced and instead saw it as a great excuse to get my first motorbike and commute to school. Unfortunately, one bike trip to school ended with me waking up in the care of the NHS. But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining and during my four-month rehabilitation at a local hospital I was looked after by a guy who would set me on my nursing journey.

Up to that time my potential career choice hadn’t evolved much further than a bit of a ‘Miss World’ notion that I would care for people and save the world. The aforementioned church upbringing had ensured a steady stream of folks needing assistance around the house. But, being unclear what form my ‘helping people’ would take, I had chosen subjects that had me tracking into teaching.

All of that changed when I met Neil. This was in the day when nurses had time to chat and even as a 17-year-old I could see this inspirational charge nurse was a great leader and passionate about his ability to care for people. So my bike accident steered me into a profession that wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.

I suppose motorcycling and my career have always been linked. Being a biker bloke and a nurse was a bit ‘out there’ and I guess increased my then tendency to buck convention. It also went down well with clients back in the UK when I eschewed the relatively posh health authority car for my bike to make calls as a Health Visitor (an English role that is a hybrid of New Zealand’s Plunket and Public Health Nurse roles). And I do think positive connections were made with the men in families I worked  with just because I showed up on a Yamaha rather than in a Rover.

Unfortunately, even after becoming a nurse, my sense of mortality  hadn’t quite caught up with reality. But another trip to hospital following a truck tangle saw me waking up to realising you could actually do something to minimise the chance of being killed while having fun on a bike.

Getting decent rider training was the way to go and – with the help of Britain’s grandly named ‘Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents’ (RoSPA) – I learnt all about defensive riding skills and eventually became one of their instructors. After moving to New Zealand in 2005  I was an instructor for the Women’s International Motorcycle Association branch in Wellington, and working over in Oz gave me a whole new set of training challenges.

I now have less time to spare, but as an NZ Transport Agency-approved instructor I still enjoy offering motorbike training through ProRider – one of the providers of the ACC-funded Ride Forever training programme. I find this kind of education actually fits quite well with my day job. I have the satisfaction of passing on knowledge and helping people become better at what they love doing, be that biking or nursing. The youngest participant I have had on a Ride Forever course was a 16-year-old girl and the oldest a couple in their late 70s setting out to tour Australia. It is rather neat to be able to see someone who has never ridden a motorcycle take to the street safely and learn their craft with our further support as they hone their skills and expertise.

I have to admit though, that the teenage biker in me pops out from time to time as I enjoy our wonderful roads (anywhere out of Auckland!), but I know now what it takes to have fun and stay alive into the bargain – a good way to live by any measure.

Q: Where and when did you train?

A: The Nightingale School, St Thomas’ Hospital, London. I sat state finals in July 1982.

Q: Other qualifications/professional roles?

A: Bachelor of Nursing; Master of Art Education (Health Education/Promotion); Master of Science (Medical Science); Postgraduate Diploma in Travel Medicine (Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow [RCPSG]); Postgraduate Certificate Education; Doctor of Education.

I am also a reservist nursing officer in the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps (RNZNC).

Q: When and/or why did you decide to become a nurse?

A: I wanted to be a soldier when I was little (I was a real tomboy as a child). After a period of being in hospital as a 10 year old, I wanted to become a nurse, but then changed my mind and wanted to become a doctor in the Army. I realised that I wasn’t going to get the grades, so I applied to study pharmacy at university. I failed physics, so applied to study nursing in London. I have been in nursing ever since, apart from a very short spell as a kennel maid in Cyprus!

Q: What was your nursing career up to your current job?

A: After qualifying as a nurse in 1982, I spent one year as a staff nurse at St Thomas’ Hospital and then joined the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps in 1983. I had a wide and varied 16-year career as an army nurse, 13 years of which were within nurse education. This involved continuing nurse education for qualified nurses who were serving in Germany, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and throughout the UK. I also spent six months as a deputy matron of a field hospital in Bosnia.

I left the British Army in 1999 and accompanied my army husband to Nepal, Germany and Cyprus, where I was able to nurse throughout this time. I have also worked on a hospital ship on the Amazon in Peru.
We moved to New Zealand at the end of 2008 for a stress-free life! I came straight to SIT as a lecturer and became the head of school after one year. I joined the RNZNC after my arrival in New Zealand and have been lucky enough to be involved in a Pacific partnership as a health educator in Samoa and Tonga. I was also very privileged to travel to Gallipoli for the Chunuk Bair centennial commemorations.

Q: So what is your current job all about?

A: SIT delivers pre-entry nursing; the New Zealand Diploma in Enrolled Nursing; Bachelor of Nursing, and the Postgraduate Diploma in Health Science programmes. I oversee the management and delivery of all these programmes. I have a significant teaching component throughout all the programmes, which allows me to know many of the students. My teaching interests are the history of nursing, evidence-based practice, health education/promotion, and leadership.

We have close relationships with the Southern District Health Board (DHB) and I also teach on the preceptorship programme delivered through the DHB. As the Head of the Nursing School, every day is different and presents a diversity of challenges. I spend a lot of time dealing with multiple emails requests and enquiries, liaise with various stakeholders and attend various meetings, participate in research, and prepare teaching sessions. In my spare time I enjoy my role as a reservist nursing officer within the New Zealand Defence Force.

Q: Can you recall the moment in your early nursing days when you first felt you were really a nurse?

A: As a third-year nursing student working on a busy neuromedical ward at St Thomas’. Third-year nursing students were known as ‘frillies’ because we got to wear a frilly cap!

Q: If there was a fairy godmother of nursing, what three wishes would you ask to be granted for the New Zealand nursing workforce?

A: Greater recognition for enrolled nurses as a regulated body of nurses; regulation of nursing students and nurse educators as a scope of practice; to have a greater influence in the promotion of healthy lifestyles for New Zealanders.

Q: What do you think are the most important personal characteristics required to be a nurse?

A: Resilience, professionalism, and compassion.

Q: As a leader in nurse education what do you believe are the strengths of nurse training in the 21st century? And where is there room for improvement?

A: The nursing programmes that are currently being delivered are very comprehensive and demonstrate the diversity of nursing opportunities. We really need to strengthen the promotion of health and primary health education within the New Zealand population and improve the image of nursing older people as an attractive career option.

Q: What do you do to try and keep fit, healthy, happy and balanced?

A: Running, boxing, walking my lovely rescue dog, and knitting. After my doctorate, I am now learning how to cook!

Q: What is your favourite way to spend a Sunday?

A: Catch up on Coronation Street on MySky, go for a long run and make a new meal, and spend time with my husband and dog and have a glass of Pimms on our deck (which has fabulous views of Invercargill and the Takitimu mountains). Sundays are such a luxury since I finished my doctorate a year ago, so I like to indulge myself!

Q: What is number one on your ‘bucket list’ of things to do?

A: Cross the Antarctic Circle.

Q: What is your favourite meal?

A: Anything that has crème brulée as a pudding!

JOB TITLE: Principal Health Advisor, Department of Corrections

Where and when did you train? 

I trained at Greenlane Hospital in Auckland in one of the last hospital-based training programmes in the 1970s. By the way, I really loved the fact that this involved me learning on the job in a practical sort of way. Over the years I have come to recognise the value of having such a solid foundation to my work.

Other qualifications/professional roles?

I took time out in the 1980s to get a BA (Hons) degree in three-dimensional design specialising in glass. Later I did my New York State nursing exams when I thought we would be living in New York for an extended period (as it turned out we only stayed a short time). I did my Master of Nursing through Victoria University of Wellington, completing it in 2004. As far as professional roles are concerned, I have done a lot of different things. These have included helping to set up an international health centre in Beijing, running a regional health training and quality programme in Jakarta, and being a clinical nurse consultant at Hutt Valley DHB. Most recently I was the Director of Nursing Primary Health Care and Integrated Care at Capital & Coast DHB.

When and/or why did you decide to become a nurse?

I decided to become a nurse when I was 14 years old. I went with my mum to see a friend of hers who was in need and we found her dead, alone in her flat. At that point I decided I wanted to contribute in a practical way to give people care, warmth and support so that if they suffered from ill health they would not be neglected and left on their own.

So what is your current job all about?

I am the Principal Health Advisor in the national office of the Department of Corrections in Wellington. On a day-to-day basis I advise on policy and best practice in relation to healthcare delivery to prisoners at 16 sites. Overall the main purpose of my job is to improve and strengthen clinical practice in the prison system.

I have been in the job eight months so far and have visited most of the sites. I am still learning about my job but I am enormously struck by the extraordinary talent and commitment of so many of the people I work alongside. It is a demanding environment to work in and there is still so much to be done.

As a leader in primary health care what do you believe are the strengths of nursing practice in the 21st century, and where is there room for improvement?

Over the years, nursing has held onto the central importance of practical experience combined with knowledge and skills. The 21st century is giving us the opportunity to work in a wide range of extended and expanded roles. In response we need to focus on increasing the breadth and depth of our knowledge.

There is a bigger issue here too. Nursing has always managed to combine warmth and integrity with specialist knowledge and skills.

As budgets grow tight – and the world of health care becomes increasingly complex and demanding – it is hard for nurses to sustain their long-established ways of working. I’m not sure I know what the answer to this is, but I think it is something that I am increasingly aware of and concerned about.

What do you think are the most important personal characteristics required to be a nurse?

Patience, sensitivity, warmth and resilience – and a sense of humour!

If there was a fairy godmother of nursing what three wishes would you ask to be granted for the New Zealand nursing workforce?

More money, more numbers and more authority.

What do you do to try and keep fit, healthy, happy and balanced?

I walk to and from work, do yoga and try to sleep well. Also a glass or two of good red wine and tasty food with friends and family is something I always look forward to.

Which book is gathering dust on your bedside table waiting for you to get round to reading it? 

Emma Sky’s The Unravelling – about a woman’s extraordinary achievements in the horror of Iraq. She started as a British council worker and then ended up as the senior advisor to one of the most powerful US military generals because her combination of skills in Arabic and hard common sense was a rare, if not unique, asset.

What have you been reading instead?

I have just finished David Galler’s Things That Matter. Beautifully and sensitively written, especially the last chapter, which focuses on his “best patient ever” – his beloved mother, Zaza.

If I wasn’t a nurse I’d be a…?

Jeweller or a glassmaker (I was that once) – or doing something working creatively with my hands.

What is your favourite meal?

Slow-cooked lamb, Moroccan style.

Ngāti Awa has laid one of its most precious taonga to rest with the passing of Putiputi O’Brien.  The daughter of Ngāti Awa chief Eruera Manuera and his wife, Pareake, Putiputi was born and raised in Te Teko in the eastern Bay of Plenty. Her tribal affiliations include Ngāti Awa, Te Arawa and Tūhoe.

Puti Puti O’Brien, was one of the first Māori nurses in New Zealand.  She began her training at Waikato Hospital School of Nursing in 1941 and graduated in 1945 as a registered general and obstetric nurse.

She began her career as a public health nurse in Te Teko when the only way into the remote country areas was by horseback. Later she completed her maternity and Plunket training, and worked for more than 50 years in the eastern Bay of Plenty, central North Island and south Waikato areas.   She is still remembered in Wairoa, my hometown, where she worked as a public health nurse and supported many whānau in Wairoa.  It was here where she met her husband Tom O’Brien.

On retiring from the Health Department, Putiputi worked in community health with Midland Health as a district health coordinator and the manager of the Ngāti Awa ki Rangitaiki health initiative during which time she was behind many innovative health promotions.

As a Māori nurse Nanny Puti was able to walk in both worlds and throughout the years has articulated eloquently the positive influence that nursing has made within Aotearoa.  It is indeed a long career that Putiputi has had and she has shared freely her knowledge to all within nursing.

Patron and proverbs

She became a founding trustee of the Tipu Ora Charitable Trust in 1991 and was also the patroness of Smokefree Nurses Aotearoa. She was a recipient of the Akenehi Hei award from Te Rūnanga o Aotearoa NZNO for her contribution to Māori health. In 1987, she was awarded the Queen’s Service Order for her contribution to a wide range of community and welfare organisations at local and national levels. She has been patron of Te Kaunihera o Nga Neehi Māori (National Council of Māori Nurses) since 1984.

On becoming the Patron of the College of Nurses, Aotearoa (NZ), Nanny Puti gifted to the College a whakatauki (proverb):

Kia taha, kia puawai, te maramatanga

The illumination and blossoming of enlightenment. 

This epitomised her positive attitude to life and her approach to care and was also the source for the name of the College newsletter Te Puawai (The Blossoming).

Nanny Puti has always been known and respected at a national level however it is in Te Teko where her loss has truly been felt.  Nanny Puti was the ‘Queen of Te Teko’ and the community of Te Teko is only now coming to terms with the gap she has left in the community.   She is an icon within this region and remained in her whare next to her marae surrounded by her whānau within Te Teko where she continued to support her community.

Trailblazer fostering next generation

We were fortunate to have Nanny Puti as our ‘cover-girl’, together with her beautiful daughter Pare, in promoting and supporting Te Ōhanga Matora Paetahi – Bachelor of Health Science Māori Nursing.   They have been inspirational in their support of establishing a Māori nursing school within Whakatane.   At the inaugural opening of the programme we had Nanny Puti as our guest of honor and to everyone’s delight including Putiputi, we relived her experiences through some old footage riding on her horse and reliving some of her amazing experiences and challenges within her career.   We were all delighted in watching her laughing and realizing that it was ‘her’ in the clips.

She was a trailblazer and the tauira (students) who were fortunate enough to re-live this with Nanny Puti will have this memory of her in this magic moment.   We were so fortunate to be able to fulfill one of her dreams, which was to see Te Ōhanga Mataora Paetahi delivered from within the culturally-strong environment of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi

Nanny Puti dedicated her life to what she later described as ‘absolutely, positively nursing’.   In Nanny Puti’s words:

“Nursing by its very essence is about positive impact, we just need to tap its full potential in every setting and every context … Let’s together reach out and grasp the fullness of what we have to offer and turn all our energy to achieving a ‘positive impact’ rather than wasting energy on what leads to negativity. Let us collectively agree we are absolutely, positively nursing.”

The College of Nurses has been truly privileged to have had Putiputi O’Brien as our Patron and thank her whānau for sharing her with us all.

Hāere, hāere, hāere atu rā koe e kui ka moe nei o whatu, ka mahue nei te manehurangi

O te putiputi o te rātā whakaruruhau ki ritoroti a to pā harakeke ka heke nei tōna momo.