There will be some time for reflection, tears and team farewells today at the Sarina Hospital as Pauline Maude takes her final walk through the wards as the director of nursing.
She is cruising towards a well-earned retirement, as well as a milestone celebration.
“I started my nursing training in 1977 and there's a cruise next year in September for our group, about 12 of us, to celebrate our 50-year anniversary,” Pauline said.
“We trained in Parramatta in Sydney; a couple of nurses now live in America, one in England and some on the NSW north coast.
“I was also a student nurse when Westmead Hospital (Western Sydney) was being built which all started with just four wards on two floors.
“As my 18 months there rolled on, we saw theatres come online and the emergency department. We actually saw that hospital come to be.
“I think that's probably where my interest in redevelopments and models of care started, because it has been there all the way through when I reflect on it,” she said.
There have been many other projects and places to call home in the years that followed as Pauline’s career took her north to Queensland and through to the tip of the Northern Territory in Arnhem Land.
She was the nurse unit manager at Maryborough Hospital and set up birthing services at St Stephen’s Private Hospital in Hervey Bay.
“We were having 1000 births a year at Maryborough Base maternity; that was my grounding in midwifery,” Pauline said.
There was a switch to Corrective Services and the establishment of prison health services at Maryborough, as well as a later stint in human resources management at Townsville’s prison.
“We had a couple of months to commission the Maryborough prison, set everything up, recruit all the staff; so it was the service delivery and operational commissioning side of things.
“It my first little dabble in it and it was fun,” she said.
Other highlights in a busy career include models of care reviews when Maryborough services were transitioned to Hervey Bay, stints in Stanthorpe and Bourke, and the planning of ED redevelopments in Bowen and in Gove (Arnhem Land in NT).
It was this consistent development theme that eventually led Pauline to Sarina in 2021 for the build of the new hospital which opened in April 2024.
Pauline highlighted the importance of connections through the years.
“People are the most important thing, rather than the bricks and the mortar,” she said.
“We all have good and bad days and everyone's trying to do a good job but the most important thing is relationships.
“You can run a perfectly amazing health service in a tent as long as you've got the right people working together.”
There is a wonderful twist in this tale of connections, which stems back to Pauline’s time as the director of nursing (DON) at Bowen.
“Here’s an interesting fact about that time when Bowen transitioned from Townsville to Mackay HHS,” Pauline said.
“We got a nurse unit manager position which we hadn’t had before and Ben Lawrence came onto the scene for that role.
“Some years ago, Ben found his very first letter of appointment to Maryborough hospital as an assistant in nursing for the nursing home and my signature was on it in my first gig as a DON in an acting capacity.
“Now Ben, the DON at Collinsville, has very kindly put me on as a casual registered nurse at Collinsville, and I'm going to help him with his antenatal and child health, which is where my heart is.
“So we’ve had some fun with that.
“I gave Ben his first job in nursing and now he is giving me my last.”
Pauline describes her career in health as “an amazing journey”.
“I think about it and wonder ‘would you have done anything differently?’ and I don’t think I would have,” she said.
“I’ve had a very privileged career – I only think of it as a privilege.”