Celebrating International Nurses Day with Director of Nursing Emily Davis

International Nurses Day is celebrated each year on 12 May, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.

This year’s theme is ‘Nurses: A Voice to Lead – Invest in nursing and respect rights to secure global health. It focuses on the need to invest in nursing and respecting the rights of nurses to build resilient, high quality health systems to meet the needs of individuals and communities now and into the future.

In celebration of International Nurses Day, we spoke with one of our customers, Emily Davis, Director of Nursing at Karratha Health Campus, who shares with us about her nursing career and what inspires her.

“I’ve been a nurse for 13 years and my career has led me down paths that I never would have imagined that I would have gone, and ever experienced,” she said.

Emily says her career inspiration was a mix of watching her mother, who was an Emergency Department nurse, and the TV show All Saints that aired from the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

“I loved watching mum’s career. She was constantly exploring new avenues of nursing, so that was exciting, and when I started to watch All Saints as a kid, I realised my future lay in Emergency Department nursing,” Emily said.

“After university I started work in Logan in Southeast Queensland before I got the opportunity to move the family to Karratha as District Director of Nursing and Midwifery for West Pilbara.

“It is an exciting change to now experience rural and remote nursing. I am loving the different perspective that you get in the country and how you can build rapport with patients by seeing them through their entire healthcare journey.”

Throughout her career, Emily has seen some exciting changes in healthcare as technology has developed.

“Today’s technology means that our team in in Karratha can see a patient’s record electronically rather than us having to fax them off to specialists in Perth,” she said.

“We also have access to TeleChemotherapy, which is a treatment where regional medical oncology and haematology patients are able to receive low risk cancer treatments at a local site with the support of specialist clinicians via video supervision. 

“This saves people having to pack up their whole lives and move to Perth for treatment. They can now stay in the comfort of their own home, surrounded and supported by family and friends.

“This shift in technology has definitely shaped my nursing career thoughts completely.”

When asked about the highlight of her career, Emily said she enjoys watching her younger nurses grow in their careers and start to ‘shine’.

“I believe people should never stop learning and should be constantly given opportunities to learn,” Emily said.

“Watching students that I have mentored going on to shine in their own careers is my inspiration. 

“We are an ageing profession so we need to mentor these fresh nurses straight out of university so they can apply their training in a practical setting. If they’re given opportunities, they will hopefully stay engaged and remain in the profession.

“I think the future of health is in good hands.”

HSS is proud to be supporting our nurses across the WA health system and wish them all very happy International Nurses Day!