Hello! My healthcare story started as a child growing up as an expat in Latin America. From a very young age, I was aware how fortunate I was and started to develop a real sense of care and compassion for the people (and social conditions) I could see around me. With a history of nursing in the family it seemed a natural progression when I left school. I trained in Australia and quickly progressed to completing my midwifery training as well. I found my niche there and remained a midwife for the rest of my clinical career. Despite considering it my niche, I was disturbed by some of the practices and attitudes in the healthcare culture and quickly became interested in exploring “other ways of doing things” – I think my interest in exploring solutions from outside of healthcare and my curiosity about innovation, influence, culture and strategic planning was born there.

My career twisted and turned from there: I was in the first team of midwives to establish the Birth Centre at the Royal Womens’ Hospital, a new model of care for the State of Queensland at the time. My involvement in this led to an invitation to take part in the King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH) Inquiry in 2000. My role entailed reviewing and summarising the charts of 1,000 adverse events. Not surprisingly, this “birds eye view” of systems and communication (combined with my social justice bent) lit a fire in my belly for safety, quality, communication and understanding error and human factors. I helped to establish the first Human Error and Patient Safety (HEAPS) workshops in Queensland and continue presenting these to this day (currently known as CAPS – Communication and Patient Safety). This involvement led me to a decade in the public service, an experience rich in change management, influence, understanding politics and the real ins and outs of a massive and complex healthcare system.

During this time, reflecting my interest in innovation and improving the human condition (!) I established and ran a program which became known as Transforming Care. It was an emergent program, based on the power of social networks (before social media!) and a shared sense of purpose. Many of the innovations brought in during this time are in practice in healthcare today: patient journey boards, patient communication boards, bedside handover and medication safety vests among them.

I moved out of the public service and into the private sector. At this stage, I was a coach for The Studer Group in Australia and had the opportunity to coach several large organisations, including private and public hospitals and small, rural and remote facilities. This consolidated my love of coaching and supporting my colleagues. I felt hopeful for healthcare, especially when being led in “bite size” units (teams, departments, small facilities) and following a systematic improvement methodology.

My wake up call, and the start of my focus on well-being, came when my beautiful brother took his own life after an extended illness triggered by burnout in the social services. At the same time, I was experiencing “visceral” palpable anxiety myself. Though, sadly, my research about stress, anxiety, burnout and resilience came too late for my brother, it opened a whole new field of knowledge for me and has been life changing. This second wave of knowledge heavily influences my coaching, workshops and presentations and keeps me real with colleagues facing difficult times in our complex systems. It led me to the field of neuroleadership and a better understanding of the brain and physiology of stress, fear, dealing with complexity and burnout. More recently I have been fascinated by new information on the interplay of our sympathetic ("fight / flight") and parasympathetic ("rest / digest") nervous systems in the practice of compassion. I have found this field resonates strongly with health providers, for its pragmatism, relevance and familiar elements of physiology.

The key influences I bring to my coaching, workshops and presentations now include:

• Neuroscience and its impact on communication and well-being
• Positive Psychology - strengths based; solutions focused
• The Energy Project – findings and applications
• General Fundamental Management Principles
• Complex Systems and Human Factors - applications for a safer culture
• Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) principles
• Mindfulness