Nurses and Midwives

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (15:28): I, too, would like to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible work of nurses and midwives, obviously in recognition of International Day of the Midwife and International Nurses Day. Growing up, I was surrounded by a number of nurses and midwives. My uncle is in fact a mental health nurse, and he has done some really incredible work. I have two aunties who are nurses, Bianca and Catherine—who was a nurse—and my beautiful aunty Bec is a midwife, who has just, alongside a number of other midwives, finished up at the North Eastern Community Hospital.

While I am here today, I would like to acknowledge the work of all the incredible midwives at North Eastern Community, many of whom are moving on to other jobs, and also acknowledge the work that not just the midwives have done but all the staff have done in terms of bringing babies into the world not far from my community. I know that they have done incredible work there—I have gone to visit a number of beautiful babies at North Eastern Community—and my aunty Bec was one of them.

In my electorate, we have a number of wonderful nurses. My electorate is home to Modbury Hospital, so of course there are a number of nurses there, but we are also the electorate with the most aged-care and retirement care facilities in the state, so we have a number of nurses working in aged care and community care across my electorate. I would like to acknowledge the work of each and every one of those nurses in keeping our community safe, but also keeping our community dignified, particularly in those last years and months of individuals' lives.

This year and last year I ran a bit of a competition on social media to acknowledge nurses in my community, offering a Gorman set of scrubs to nurses, and the way that I did that was by asking for individuals from my community to name a nurse who means something to them, who has contributed to their life in some way. I think it is really important because it shows not only acknowledgement from myself, or other members of parliament, about the work of nurses, but it has given people in our community an opportunity to acknowledge someone in their life whom they know goes above and beyond.

The name of the winner of that competition last year was Emma, and Emma was a nurse who also started a gym for new mums. She had this wonderful gym in Golden Grove where mums could come and bring their babies and they would have a little creche sort of setup and she did tailored gym activities for new mums. There were many mums who came and nominated Emma, not just for her work as a nurse but of course for this environment that she provided to many of them who perhaps did not have friends or connections or other relatives with babies and what that meant for them in the early days of motherhood. I would really like to acknowledge Emma and her incredible work at Nourish & Flourish Fitness I believe it is called.

This year the winner of our Gorman scrub is Meghan Connelly, who I believe joins us here today, and she was nominated by her family members. She is a nursing student who has just entered the Golden Key Society for her top result, so of course will be contributing to nursing in our state. Obviously, as a student she is already contributing, and will be continuing to contribute as she finishes her studies. I got chatting to Meghan's relatives at netball earlier this week about the incredible work that she does and they just spoke about how proud they are of you, Meghan, and all of the incredible work that you are doing, so shout-out to you.

I would like to also mention a few of the others and there were a huge number of nurses who were listed in both last year's competition and this year's, but some really wonderful stories, and I think again it goes to the quality of the people that we have in the profession here in our state. One that I thought was really beautiful was a story of Nakeita Snell. She was tagged by her twin sister and she works with children and has lived experience having been a child who grew up in hospital as a sick child herself, and I thought the way that she has decided to give back was really important.

There was the story of Tamara Taylor, who is a PICU nurse, and many of us of course will have known babies in the NICU, the PICU and the SCBU, and I know just what that service provides to families who are going through some of the most difficult days of their lives. I would really like to acknowledge, of course, the work of our nurses and midwives caring for little babies in there when there are some really difficult moments for families.

There was Kirsten Naseby, who was named as the only nurse able to give flu shots to a whole group of children and I thought that was really special as well, having that connection with someone who perhaps does not want to go in and get an injection. It says a lot about all of the different roles that a nurse has to take on and often it might be just to make an experience more comfortable for someone who is obviously going through something tough. I just want to acknowledge all the work of the nurses and midwives in my community and across the state today.