{"id":1284,"date":"2017-06-01T09:05:05","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T23:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2017-08-31T12:41:16","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T03:11:16","slug":"taking-it-up-a-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/2017\/06\/01\/taking-it-up-a-level\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking it up a level"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Alice Springs Centre for Remote Health\u2019s Master of Remote and Indigenous Health helps nurses and other health workers become even more qualified to work and thrive in the bush. <\/em>Story by Ken Eastwood. Published in Outback Magazine June\/July 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Health workers in remote areas and Indigenous communities face a range of complex issues. They may be the only medical help around, have limited resources and may be dealing with multifaceted problems.<\/p>\n

Since 2011, the Centre for Remote Health<\/a> at Alice Springs has offered a Master of Remote and Indigenous Health<\/a> to help prepare nurses and other allied health workers to deal with such complexities.<\/p>\n

\u201cMostly, the great bulk of our students are nurses \u2013 either ones who are already working remotely and want to up their skills, but we also have people coming in who want to go and work remotely or practise remotely,\u201d says Professor Tim Carey<\/a>, director of the centre. \u201cBy educating and upskilling health professionals, we think they\u2019re better equipped to stay out in remote communities longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The centre, jointly run by Charles Darwin University and Flinders University, was formed in 1998 and offers graduate certificates and graduate diplomas in remote health practice. \u201cWe have students from all over the country and they go all over the country,\u201d Tim says. \u201cFor some it\u2019s just about getting their learning at a higher level.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Masters degree requires the completion of 12 subjects, and is usually done part-time over about five years. Most of the courses can be done online and some have a two-day or five-day workshop, during which students come to Alice Springs and stay in subsidised student housing. \u201cPrimary care is a big part of what we look at, and Indigenous health is a very sharp focus,\u201d Tim says. \u201cChronic disease is also high on the agenda.\u201d The course also covers public health issues, social determinants of health and advanced nursing skills.<\/p>\n

Former graduate of the course, and now one of the lecturers who teaches subjects in remote nursing, chronic disease and management, Karen Collas<\/a>, has worked in remote communities from the Top End to Queensland, New South Wales, Christmas Island and Central Australia. \u201cThe course gives the nurses that foundation knowledge to work out bush. They don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know,\u201d Karen says. \u201cMost Australians don\u2019t have a lot of experience with remote areas or Indigenous people. There\u2019s a shortage of remote area nurses and yet it\u2019s so important that any remote communities have highly trained and skilled nurses because they\u2019re not going to get a doctor out there fulltime \u2026 I hope in the future there will be nurse practitioners in all remote areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karen says that one of the challenges she has faced in her remote nursing career is developing critical thinking to assess priorities. \u201cWorking out, when you\u2019ve got a person in front of you, what are the really important issues and what are the side issues,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Tim says that the Masters degree involves a large research component. \u201cOne of the students at the moment is looking at the extent to which health service managers get involved in quality improvement processes,\u201d he says. They are determining whether remote health care managers are so caught up just delivering health services that they don\u2019t take time to assess their effectiveness. \u201cOne of the really big problems out in remote areas and communities is that lots of programs spring up, but they\u2019re rarely evaluated,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Karen says that the Masters degree would suit \u201cany nurse interested in the challenging and rewarding career of remote nursing. It\u2019s a real privilege to be involved in people\u2019s lives who live in remote areas\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Alice Springs Centre for Remote Health\u2019s Master of Remote and Indigenous Health helps nurses and other health workers become even more qualified to work and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":1596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-centre-for-remote-health"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/flinders-nt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}