Past Rural Nursing & Medical Scholarships Program

Rural nursing has always been a dream of mine.   I believe there is more to this type of nursing than just the rural setting.   It involves a whole lot more, including recognising and providing rural community health support, along with building strong patient rapport, which is less likely in a busy Melbourne hospital.  I ahve grown up with the ambition to help those in need of medical assistance.   I believe I can strongly provide adequate nursing care for these disadvantaged rural towns like Sale and nearby surrounds.

I have grown up within Bairnsdale and surrounding areas, and from a young age have had the opportunity to observe how important a rural hospital, such as Bairnsdale Regional Health service (BRHS) is to the community, through the hard work my mother put into nursing the community. The hospital Ensures that the communities needs are met, allowing the residents within the surrounding area to utilise this service to provide care that can allow them to lead a healthy enjoyable lifestyle. Having this experience of being involved in the community, which has had a reliance on these services, has given me the passion to seek a career at a rural hospital to utilise my skills and dedication to better my community.

My parents have endeavoured to provide me with the opportunities that VCE and tertiary education provide by labouring tirelessly in the primary industry. As generations of my family have been involved in agriculture and dairy farming, I have been acquainted with labourers more so than academics. I can empathize with their struggles in particular and can fully understand their inclination to avoid seeking help for physical and mental stresses. This is knowledge that I hope to apply to my nursing profession and that will motivate me in turn to give only the best of myself to a cause that I believe is worthy. It is my aspiration to fully invest myself into rural and remote communities in the future and especially to help the state of the farming communities health and wellbeing through nursing, specialised care and rehabilitation. I want to be a district nurse in my own rural community – to return and help the community that gave me the opportunity to be a registered nurse.

To give you a bit of background on myself, my husband and I moved to the area five years ago with the last three being the busiest.   I started and finished my nursing studies, and we also grew our family and now have two young boys.   We made the decision to move from Melbourne to the Gippsland region after having holidayed in the area fro several years and wanting to settle down and provide our children with the best possible upbringing.   Having grown up in the country myself, I have many fond memories of my childhood and wanted the same for my own children.   Since moving, not only have we never regretted the decision, but it also helped me develop a definitive career path for myself.

I have always wanted to be a nurse, and work in a hospital within a small town.   I have never really thought about the reasoning behind that, until this application.   Irrespective of nursing, I genuinely love people.   Even if I think I am having a horrible day, I always say to myself ‘if you make one person smile, then today was a good day’.    That is what I try to live by every single day.  Nursing allows me to take my little motto, that one step further.

I wish to be a rural nurse as I am passionate about caring for others and providing healthcare to rural and remote communities, especially local areas surround and within the East Gippsland community.    I have lived in Paynesville from a very young age and nursing is in my blood.   My nan, mother and multiple other family members ere and are all local nurses here in East Gippsland, most based at Bairnsdale Regional Health Service.   I have lived in East Gippsland all my life and hive witnessed first-hand the lack of resources available to those living in rural hospitals are in this community and the need for them and services to be provided to the community.   I chose to study flexible online through Federation University so I could continue to live locally and provide nursing care to the local community as an endorsed enrolled nurse while studying my Bachelor of Nursing degree.   I finished my final clinical placement at the start of November 2019 and I have experienced first hand the need for rural nurses in East Gippland.  I have completed most of my clinical placement at rural hospitals and have been successful in obtaining a post-grad nursing in East Gippland collaborative program through Bairnsdale Regional Health Service in 2020.

Rural nursing to me is having extended knowledge on nursing skills in order to care for members of the community with a range of different conditions.   I thoroughly enjoy this challenge and strive to meet the needs of people in rural areas.   This may be influenced by the lack of resources compared to metropolitan health services and the distance to these services.   The desire I have of being a rural nurse is fuelled from multiple factors including my upbringing, family and passion.

I wish to be a rural nurse because I believe our country towns give us a great opportunity to develop a diverse range of skills both in the clinical field and community setting.   Many rural and regional Australian’s experience poorer health outcomes when compared to urban and metropolitan cities.  Rural nurses play a big role in identifying the strengths and challenges that their communities face and contribute to finding opportunities to improve the overall health outcomes of these challenges.   I have grown up in the East Gippsland area and look forward to giving back to my community during my 2020 graduate year at Bairnsdale.

My name is Justine and I grew up in the Bairnsdale area.   I always pictured myself raising my family here where I feel a strong bond to family and community.

I was drawn to nursing by my grandmother who trained at BRHS (Bairnsdale) before nursing in the city.   She settled back in the East Gippsland area while I was young and worked as a bush nurse.  During this time she shared a journal with me about her time as a relief bush nurse traveling to rural and remote communities.  Reading these entries I was amazed at experiences she had  and I came to understand how important the nurses’s role is in rural health,.  Her experiences inspired me to follow her path into nursing.

I have always had great respect and admiration for the nurse’s in our rural community.   Following in the footsteps of my mother, I have aspired to be a nurse since I was a child.  Prior to commencing the Bachelor of Nursing at Federation University, I have thoroughly enjoyed working as an enrolled nurse on nurse bank at Central Gippsland Health, in multiple areas of the hospital and day care and needs.   I enjoy listening to patients’ and residents’ stories, past or present; many born and raised int he area in difficult times and financial hardship, their part has made our local area what it is today.   I admire the path that has led them to where they are now, which helps me care for them in a holistic way.