The Barefoot Healer

coming to the island Well, nursing up here in the Torres Straight has been educational. The job itself involves the usual looking after patients on the ward, about 2 thirds of which are nursing home pt's awaiting placement, interspersed by the occasional harrowing time of interest when something interesting wanders into the tiny ED. There's a whole host of really interesting nurses here, mainly ED and theatre specialists who are all annoyed and disgusted at having to spend most of their shifts doing showers and moving patients in lifters, after being told by their agencies that the job was in their speciality. But realistically, in any setting like this you do need to have skilled people on hand for when the shit hits the fan. But they also need to staff the ward the rest of the time. Max, a local boy and Brian the MSF guy The range of experience the travelling nurses bring with them is pretty impressive. I've met Brian, who works for doctors without bord...

flying over the ocean The journey started with the usual agency hiccups. The lass in the office had a really hard time understanding where I was and how difficult it was to get to anywhere else. After a few days of back and forth, I ended up with a one and a half hour drive in a hire car, (which I ended up paying for myself due to more mis-comunications), a 2 hour flight to Cairns, an overnight stay in a hotel there (with taxis rides I paid for there and back), another 2 hour flight up to Horne Island and a 15 minute ferry ride to Thursday Island (which I again paid for.) It was all pretty exciting....and expensive. Sigh...somehow this often seems to happen with agency work...you can claim these expenses back from the agency, but it always means you have to have the cash to fork out first...and as I'm usually down to my last penny before I leave, it gets a bit scary...then of course you have to keep track of receipts and send originals into the agency...and then th...