I first heard about the College — or Congress as it was known then — while completing psychiatric nursing training at Royal Park in Melbourne. Since my placement at Ballarat Lakeside during my general training, I had always wanted to be a mental health nurse, but for a range of reasons I took a detour to intensive care. I had been a member of the national professional group for critical care nurses and recognised the importance of being a member of a professional organisation in my area of specialisation — it kept me abreast of current issues and ideas. So I joined the College in 1989.
For the first few years I attended the local College meetings and, to be honest, didn't get much out of them. However, I did benefit from the journal and getting to know other mental health nurses. It was in 1995 when I attended my first conference that I really began to appreciate the benefits of being a member. I was exposed to new ideas — but vivid in my memory was a workshop on clinical supervision using whiteboards and magnets, facilitated by the late Mike Consedine. Little did I know then that I would eventually become a facilitator of the Role Development Model of clinical supervision that he was developing at that time. I started attending the conference on a reasonably regular basis and have now attended 21.
In 1996 I went to the conference in Auckland — a cultural awareness raising event called "Culture & Caring: Caring & Culture." Judy Gillette and Meredith Bucknell presented their project that placed two mental health nurses into the emergency departments of two Melbourne hospitals. This fuelled my longstanding hope to work as a Psychiatric/Mental Health Consultation-Liaison (CL) Nurse in a general hospital. In 1997 my goal was achieved when I started work as a CL nurse at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. In 1999 at the College conference in Launceston I met Jenni Bryant, a CL nurse from Newcastle who presented on delirium — the start of a lifelong connection. It was at this conference that Jenni, Cecily Pollard, and I began to nurture our vision of what is now the Consultation-Liaison Special Interest Group.
At the end of 1999, I teamed up with Brenda Happell and we completed a CL nursing evaluation as part of the first round of funding for the Nurse Practitioner Project in Victoria. We presented this project at the College conference in Broadbeach in 2000 where we were runners up in the Stan Alchin Award. This project led to CL nursing positions developing across Melbourne and, as they say, the rest is history. I am now focused on writing up my PhD exploring how mental health nurse consultants contribute to the care of and outcomes for general hospital patients experiencing mental health conditions.
My other passion is clinical supervision. It is through the College that I was introduced to the Australian Clinical Supervision Association and became the College representative on their multidisciplinary committee in 2015. As chair of the Clinical Supervision Special Interest Group, I am keen to progress the clinical supervision agenda. I know that without clinical supervision, I could not have stayed in clinical practice for as long as I did. Now I have the pleasure of supervising nurses and midwives and supporting them to provide competent and compassionate care.
I have always been an active member of the College — holding various roles including Board member, roles in the CLSIG, and Victorian Branch secretary when we delivered minutes by post. By far the most rewarding part of being in the College is meeting up with colleagues, sharing serious stuff as well as having fun, and progressing the profile of mental health nurses. Mental health nursing is more important than ever. Being a mental health nurse has provided me with the opportunity to be with people during the extremes of life, and I hope that my presence has provided those people with something helpful. Would my career be the same if I was not a College member? I doubt it. Can I imagine not being a member of the College? No I can't.