With a nursing and midwifery career spanning 47 years across the region, Seana Clarke is now very comfortable being in the driver’s seat of digital change.
As the Mackay HHS Nursing Director for Digital Health, she is still asking the questions that matter – but now it’s helping to shape the future of healthcare by ensuring digital systems work for clinicians, improve patient care and deliver greater equity for regional communities.
Seana has worked across Mackay HHS rural facilities from Sarina and Clermont to Dysart and the Whitsundays over the last four decades. So she knows firsthand what clinicians need from digital systems, because she has lived it.
Seana was born in Rockhampton but grew up in Blair Athol, near Clermont.
“I’d always wanted to be a nurse,” Seana said. “I was always someone who was ‘saving’ things.
Seana began her career as an enrolled nurse at Clermont Hospital in 1979 before moving to Mackay to complete her general nursing and midwifery qualifications. She returned to Clermont in 1988, where she worked as a midwife before becoming Nurse Unit Manager.
Those 11 years remain among the most rewarding of her career.
"It was the town I grew up in," she said.
"The babies you were birthing were people you'd gone to school with, and then you were caring for their grandparents at the end of life.
"We had a really good service and it was a great place to work. I always knew I'd go back to rural nursing because I loved it."
The opening of Hail Creek mine in 2003 brought change and a move to Mackay for the family, when Seana’s husband Michael took up work at the new mine.
Seana initially worked in theatre before returning to her passion for maternity, where she spent 18 years, including 14 as Nurse Unit Manager.
When the opportunity arose to lead Dysart Hospital in 2023, it felt like the right time to return west, back to where her health career had begun. Not long afterwards, another opportunity emerged and Seana yielded to the call to lead Mackay HHS through its digital transformation.
Her years of frontline experience were immensely helpful in driving transformation and change across the health service, most notably, the rollout of ieMR (electronic records) across the rural facilities.
Today, as Nursing Director for Digital Health, Seana brings her own unique perspective. She understands the realities of busy clinical environments while also helping guide organisation-wide digital change.
Chief Information Officer Stephen Power said Seana had added meaningful value and strong leadership in both spaces throughout her career.
“Seana brings a rare ability to stand alongside a ward nurse navigating the realities of workflow challenges and equally alongside executive leaders shaping system-wide transformation
“After 47 years of service across nursing, midwifery and now digital health leadership, Seana is still asking questions, still pushing boundaries and still making a difference,” he said.
“The questions have just evolved.”
Seana was on the frontline when the first computers appeared on the wards and everyone was asking ‘what do we do with this?’.
“It’s no longer ‘what do we do with this?’ it’s ‘what CAN we do with this?’,” Stephen said.
“That kind of perspective is hard-earned and that kind of insight with 47 years’ experience can’t be taught – that is why her leadership carries such weight.”
On Tuesday 30 June, colleagues past and present gathered in the Staff Retreat at Mackay Base Hospital to celebrate Seana’s dedicated length of service.
The large crowd that gathered was a reflection of not only the respect Seana commanded, but the genuine connections she had built with her colleagues, the kind that endured well beyond roles, rosters and years, Stephen said.
Her contribution to nursing, midwifery and digital change across the Mackay HHS was deeply valued.
Congratulations Seana on a stellar career of care and change spanning 47 years!