Grants, to a maximum of $5,000, are being offered by the Country Women’s Association of Australia (CWAA), in conjunction with the National Rural Health Alliance and CRANAplus, to assist rural and remote nurses and midwives to undertake continuing professional development.
The 2019 Rural and Remote Nursing and Midwifery Professional Development Grants are designed to enable registered nurses, enrolled nurses and midwives with strong links to rural and remote communities to:
• upskill;
• provide quality care; and
• meet the heath service needs of their communities.
Applications will open on 1 January 2019 and close on 15 February 2019.
Previous recipients (and their patients) have benefited greatly from the new skills and knowledge gained.
In 2017 Alison O’Brien attended a two-day Chronic Disease Management and Healthy Ageing Workshop with the support of a CWAA grant. Her workplace is developing nurse led care plan clinics for patients with chronic conditions and Alison says the workshop increased her “knowledge of health coaching, understanding the stages of change, goal setting, potential barriers and avoiding resistance to change”.
With the assistance of a CWAA grant, Mandy Bryce completed a post-graduate course on immunisation. She explains that in her small hospital in rural Victoria they have a doctor only three days each week. She says, since completing the course:
“I can now educate and immunise patients, I can assist with staff immunisation such as flu vax, I can immunise residents in the nursing home and, with a greater knowledge, now use every opportunity to educate and support immunisation in general.”
Since completing a Professional Certificate of Skin Cancer Medicine, grant recipient and nurse practitioner, Karen Savage, is now able to offer skin checks to three remote communities in Western Queensland.
“Biopsies and simple excisions [can] now be done at the local primary health care clinics, as opposed to clients having to travel thousands of kilometres.” she said.
She is planning to use local events to promote regular skin checks and is also looking into working with local shire councils to provide skin cancer education and skin checks to the road crews who maintain the roads in this remote area.
Judith March received a CWAA grant to attend an emergency ultrasound scanning course. She says:
“Point-of-care ultrasound skills are important in the rural hospital as it can lead to speedy diagnosis and effective decision-making on transportation to a tertiary facility. Previously there was no one skilled in my area and I saw a need. The financial assistance I received greatly assisted in attending and completing the qualification.”
More information, and the application form and guidelines are available at http://ruralhealth.org.au/cwaaruralnursingcpdgrant/
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