Cancer Nurses Society of Australia Member of the Moment December 2017

Well done it’s always nice to be recognised for a job well done. Us nurses never expect it as its as a job you do for love and  not money or awards but it’s humbling and an honour when you do get an award such as that. So good job Riki.

  I was nominated for the Hesta nurse of the year awards in 2015 and I received a certificate for that nomination which I still.display at work even though it’s just a nomination!. I’ve been back working for 12 months now and I love nursing more than ever and I think having breast cancer has made me a better nurse to be honest. It raised my awareness of several important issues like wait times for recon in qld, the fact that recon surgery is classed as elective, the ridiculous restrictions on trying to access your superannuation when you’ve been diagnosed with a life threatening illness, not being able to access a Centrelink benefit of any kind if you have a partner that works as the thresholds are just ridiculous (less than the minimum wage) I had to research myself what local bc support groups are in my local area and where to access the local look good feel better program for example  as well as other online resources such as the BCNA  and I’ve been able to pass this info onto my patients and other bc survivors as I wasn’t lucky enough to have a good bc nurse to advise me of these services.

It’s made me passionate about advocating for bc survivors  by writing to and meeting with politicians to raise these issues and I was even interviewed by channel 10 news about the wait times thanks to the BCNA and I will continue to bitch moan and complain to try and get these things changed if I can. So whatever I can do to bring awareness for these issues that are important to me and other bc survivors I’ll do my best to do.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the privilege of being nominated again for the Hesta awards but the one and probably only nomination certificate I do have or will ever get probably lol I treasure it’s like an Oscar to me!!  I’m nominating someone for this years awards and if there’s a nurse any of you would like to nominate perhaps your breast care or oncology nurse or even Riki then just go to the Hesta website the nominnations close in a couple weeks. I might start a post about it too as there’s so many great nurses out there we all speak so highly on here about the nurses that take care of us (except for me my bc nurse was bloody awful)

And RIki thank you for your compassion and kindness the two most important qualities you need to have to be a nurse as far as I’m concerned these are obviously the things that have contributed to your member of the month award so congratulations to you again. Margie x