Nurse & Midwife Support Podcast Nurse & Midwife Support

Author and social worker Mary Freer has devoted her career to transforming our understanding of compassion as the CEO and Founder of Compassion Revolution. She joined midwife Celeste Pinney on the Nurse & Midwife Support podcast to discuss the importance of self-compassion and how it can help to carry nurses and midwives through post-traumatic experiences.

Dr Finbar Hopkins is an experienced Wellbeing Consultant who delivers a suite of education and training programs to help a large Melbourne hospital improve the physical and emotional health of their staff. She is a registered nurse, mental health nurse and midwife who is using the wisdom she has gained from 30 years of experience to improve the health and wellbeing of healthcare workers.

She joined the Nurse & Midwife Support podcast to discuss why it’s imperative that employers and colleagues provide trauma-informed care to nurses and midwives who are vulnerable to occupational post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-baggarrook-midwifery-aunty-gina-bundle-and-alexandrea-burton

Aboriginal Liaison Officer Aunty Gina Bundle, a Djiringanj, Walbunja woman and midwife Alexandrea Burton, a Waradjuri woman join the podcast to discuss how the Baggarrook midwifery service at The Royal Women’s Hospital is improving Culturally Safe care for First Nations patients and colleagues.

Aunty Gina explains why programs like Baggarrook are so crucial to improving outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait mothers and babies:

“Like any other organisation, public or government, you get that ‘Them blackfellas, here they go again ....’ It's not about that. It's about providing a service to community, communities that never used to have these services. 20 years is relatively new, having a KMS [Koori Maternity Service]. But to have a Baggarrook caseload within a public hospital is even newer, and creating these services for Aboriginal people. Historically, we've created them because we didn't have them. We weren't allowed to have them, or it was really hard to get them. So we created our own.”

Learn more about this award-winning midwifery program: Woman’s Journey: Baggarrook Yurrongi, Nurragh Manma Buliana.

Aunty Gina was recently awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in recognition of her service to Victoria’s Indigenous community. We thank her for her dedication to improving care for First Nations patients and workers!

This podcast is part of our special NAIDOC week newsletter, Edition 21 — Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses and midwives. https://www.nmsupport.org.au/resources/newsletter/21

The newsletter also features podcasts with the first Aboriginal Nurse Practitioner Lesley Salem and CATSINaM CEO Dr Ali Drummond.

https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-lesley-salem-first-aboriginal-nurse-practitioner
https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-cultural-safety-dr-ali-drummond


If you need to talk, Nurse & Midwife Support is here to support you: 1800 667 877 or by email.
https://www.nmsupport.org.au/support

https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-cultural-safety-dr-ali-drummond

Dr Ali Drummond is the new CEO of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives (CATSINaM). https://catsinam.org.au/our-ceo/

He is a Meriam and Erubam man of Zenadh Kes (Torres Straits) and Wuthathi man from Far North Queensland. Dr Drummond joins us on the podcast to share his experiences as a nurse and academic, and why it’s so important to embed Cultural Safety and Cultural Humility training in academia and education.

Dr Drummond says:

“Understanding when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in (the workplace) are being disempowered, are being treated like crap for no other reason but for them being Indigenous, that is very challenging. I think nurses and midwives can better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses, midwives and students by doing training like Murra Mullingari, to understand cultural safety. Understand those different manifestations of racism. Learn in other programs, you learn language to address these things. It's far safer for a non-Indigenous nurse, midwife or student to actually step up and say, "Actually, that's inappropriate." This is why. Don't expect the Aboriginal person or the person who's being targeted with this racism to do it themselves. That's an important role.

I think [the role that] nurses and midwives can play is stepping up.”

When we recorded this podcast, Dr Drummond was Acting CEO of CATSINaM, but he has recently been permanently appointed to the role. Congratulations Dr Drummond, and thank you for joining us to share your expertise!

This podcast is part of our special NAIDOC week newsletter, Edition 21 — Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses and midwives. https://www.nmsupport.org.au/resources/newsletter/21

The newsletter also features podcasts with Lesley Salem, the first Aboriginal Nurse Practitioner, and Aunty Gina Bundle and Alexandrea Burton of the Baggarrook midwifery program.
https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-lesley-salem-first-aboriginal-nurse-practitioner
https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-baggarrook-midwifery-aunty-gina-bundle-and-alexandrea-burton

If you’re challenged by issues related to Cultural Safety and need to talk, Nurse & Midwife Support is here to support you: 1800 667 877 or by email. https://www.nmsupport.org.au/support

https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-lesley-salem-first-aboriginal-nurse-practitioner

Wonnarua woman Lesley Salem was the first Aboriginal Nurse Practitioner. She has dedicated her career to improving care for people experiencing chronic illness in rural and remote communities. She joined us on the podcast to share her story and the insights earned from her experiences, including her passion for diverse forms of education and the importance of mentoring the next generation of First Nations healthcare workers.

Lesley tells us:

“It starts with the growth of our students as undergraduates. It's the growth that [comes from] believing in what you can do. I thank God that I did Oral Vivas, because I've got mild adult dyslexia, and I can't write for crap. Any book I've published, you'll see another name there with me. It's usually my best friend, Barb Harvey, who takes me through every paragraph and says, "What are you trying to say here?"

But we need encouragement. As long as our universities or Western models were oral ... I could have given 50,000 words without a problem. I could have had my notes in front of me and referenced any talk that I give along the way. I don't know what it is, but I can't get it from my head to paper. There's no consideration for anyone with learning difficulties or anything. So a lot of our good nurses, who don't have that ability to write, feel that they're left out and leave. New ways of learning, bringing back Oral Vivas, letting somebody talk or show what they can do.

A lot of our Aboriginal nurses will feel left out, particularly from our rural and remote areas, because universities do nothing to embrace a different way of learning. I was lucky in country hospitals, there was an Oral Viva for everything. I barely passed any written thing, but we were so lucky, every PTS stage, everything up, we had to do an Oral Viva. Thank God, because I could talk.”


Thank you Lesley for joining us and sharing your knowledge. If you’d like to keep up with Lesley or look at her beautiful artwork, you can check out her website. https://www.lesleysalem.com.au/

This podcast is part of our special NAIDOC week newsletter, Edition 21 — Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses and midwives. https://www.nmsupport.org.au/resources/newsletter/21

The newsletter also features podcasts with CATSINaM CEO Dr Ali Drummond and Aunty Gina Bundle and Alexandrea Burton of the Baggarrook midwifery program.

https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-cultural-safety-dr-ali-drummond
https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-baggarrook-midwifery-aunty-gina-bundle-and-alexandrea-burton

If you’re struggling and need to talk, Nurse & Midwife Support is here to support you: 1800 667 877 or by email. https://www.nmsupport.org.au/support

View the podcast transcript: https://www.nmsupport.org.au/news/podcast-Burnout-in-nursing-and-midwifery

Registered psychologist, coach and author Sharee Johnson talks burnout in this podcast episode with new co-host Celeste Pinney. Sharee shares the wisdom of many years of experience working with doctors who have lived through burnout. Sharee offers insights and practical strategies for nurses and midwives to improve health and wellbeing and prevent or recover from burnout.

Sharee explains the importance of understanding burnout as both an individual and organisational experience:

"The very first, and most important thing, that everybody needs to hear is that burnout is not a mental illness, it's not something wrong with the individual. It's a mismatch or a relationship difficulty, if you like, between the individual and their workplace…

When we're thinking about burnout, we do want to think about individual responsibility. It is about how you cope, how you ask for what you need, and how you develop support networks around yourself. We often talk in the work we do about having an internal scaffold and an external scaffold, both of which help hold you up, if you like. But we need to think about those individual skills of asking for help, regulating ourselves, being able to manage our mind effectively, having enough sleep, all of these things.

(But) even if we do all of those things beautifully, if the workplace is toxic or dysfunctional, then it won't matter how skilled we are as individuals, the workplace is still problematic. So we need to use a both/and lens when we're talking about burnout."

Listen to find out more about how you can identify if and why you may be experiencing symptoms of burnout, how to get the right support, and how we can gradually begin to create habits to shift our state and find our way back to wellbeing.

If you’re dealing with burnout, Nurse & Midwife Support is here to support you: 1800 667 877 or by email: https://www.nmsupport.org.au/support

Check out the rest of this newsletter: https://www.nmsupport.org.au/resources/newsletter/20