NCAH - The Career Resource for Nurses & Allied Health Professionals

When nurse, Joanne Craven moved into her parents’ Gippsland home in September 2008, she had no idea she would stay in that house for only a few months.

Joanne’s father had suffered a stroke 12 months earlier and was now wheelchair bound, so she decided to move in and help her mother care for him. 

A few days later fires broke out in the area and Joanne and her parents had to unexpectedly flee.

“It was a 40 degree day and we were home,” said Joanne.  “We realised there were fires but were unaware they were so close. We didn’t leave straight away because we didn’t realise how bad it was.  Then we were evacuated in the late afternoon.  We grabbed Dad, his wheelchair and his medications and left with the two dogs and two cats.  We left with the clothes on our back and that’s it.”

Joanne and her parents stayed in a motel for three days, unable to return to their property.  Nobody could tell them what had happened until eventually the police told her the house had burned down and their five acres were burnt from fence line to fence line.

“We lost everything,” said Joanne. “All our belongings and a lifetime of memories were gone.”

“Everything I owned to do with nursing was also lost, including my reference books, certificates, blood pressure machine, everything.”

Joanne had been a student at Mayfield Education for two years, having completed her Div 2 Nursing qualifications there. She felt she needed to do further study while living with her parents, in Gippsland and she enrolled into Mayfield’s Medication Endorsement course.

“I had studied at Mayfield for two years and I wanted to further my training,” she said.  “One week after the fires I received notification that I’d been accepted for the course.  I knew it would be a heavy workload, but I also thought that it would focus my mind away from what we’d just been through.”

“The staff at Mayfield were very supportive. I was told that I could go to them for assistance at any time and they understood that my role at home is to help my mother care for Dad, so they tried to give me clinical placements as close to home as possible.

“I had absolutely no text books left and Mayfield arranged a donation of over $500 worth of books very early in the course. That meant I had one less thing to worry about at such a difficult time and helped me to hit the ground running with my studies.”

Joanne finished the course in August and now intends to continue with further studies.

“If I had tried to do that course elsewhere, I probably wouldn’t have finished it,” she says.  “It’s a very heavy workload and I don’t think I would have received the support that Mayfield gave me from a larger institution.  All the teachers treat us as individuals and encourage us to talk to them about any problems we’re having.  They’re very understanding and caring. In my situation, that made the world of difference.”

Joanne has just completed three years of working in aged care and is looking forward to moving into an acute care setting.