Andrew Mallett - a potted history
Starting hospital-based training in England in the Winter of 1984, I emerged as a Registered Psychiatric Nurse three years later. I worked at some of the big erstwhile 'lunatic asylums' in Norwich including Hellesdon Hopsital, Thorpe St. Andrews, The David Rice Hospital and The Norvic (Forensic) Clinic.
When I started nursing, many former inpatients were being encouraged to become more independent and to return to lives within the community. This was a total turn around from the former times of locking the 'mad' ones away from the public eye, often into a lifetime of institutional care.
It was a period of great change in attitudes and approach to the care of the mentally ill and it was an interesting time to be in working Psychiatry. We saw the tail end of the old 'family' of the mental institutions as well as the new beginnings of the community focus.
And we had some pretty wild times. After graduating, I was a Staff Nurse on a 30 bed male acute inpatient ward. It could get very brutal at times and we looked after some very sick people.
Two years later and it was time to move on. I left England to backpack through South East Asia for 3 months and eventually ended up in Australia at the end of 1989. I worked as an RN at Sydney's Northside Clinic, an attractive private mental health facility positioned on Sydney's North Shore.
I had shipped my 1100cc Suzuki motorbike from London to Botany Bay before leaving England. Still on a work visa which limited the length of time I was able to work in one place, I toured around the Eastern states of Australia for several months. I ended up in Townsville in Northern Queensland where I worked as a Community Psychiatric Nurse. This was at the time when the infamous Ward 10B enquiry was at its height, examining alleged abuses occuring on the ward throughout the previous 10 years.
1990 was drawing to a close and my visa was due to expire, so I decided to apply for Australian residency rather than return to England. I had seen a lot of Australia and decided this was where I wanted to live. I rode down the East coast and across to Tasmania, where the Launceston General Hospital sponsored my residency application. I worked on the inpatient acute psychiatric unit, Ward 1E for a while and then moved on to co-running a day centre for long term mentally ill people in the Launceston and wider community. I also managed to get in another motorbike tour during this period, this time around the West coast of Australia.
However after a couple of years the itchy feet were starting to twitch again. Nurse training in Australia had now moved from hospitals to universities and I decided it was time to upgrade my qualifications. I returned to New South Wales in 1993 and undertook a Bachelor of Nursing degree at Sydney's University of Technology.
As well as an academic qualification, this also allowed me to practise as a medical/surgical nurse anywhere in Australia. It was a great experience and also a bit weird. I studied full time, technically a 'student nurse' during the week and worked weekend nights as a Registered Nurse back at Northside Clinic! It was tough at times but I had academic credit and only had to study for 18 months, so it was worth the effort.
After graduating from UTS, I had thoughts of travelling again and perhaps teaching English at the same time. I undertook an intensive TEFLA Certificate at the Bondhi Junction School of English and started teaching overseas students living in Sydney, whilst still working as a Nurse Unit Manager at Northside on weekends. However later in 1994 a juicy job came up doing community nursing and I finally left the clinic to work with Redfern Community Mental Health Services. I suppose I put the thought of extended travel on hold for a while. I was still travelling home to England every two years to see my family.
It looked like the study bug wasn't going to go away either and I commenced a two year part-time Graduate Diploma in Psychotherapy, whilst looking after the mentally ill around Sydney's infamously impoverished Redfern district.
But my life was set to take yet another turn, which would have hugely significant influences on years to come. I had purchased a computer for Uni in 1994 - a time when desktop PCs were only just starting to become commonplace. I mentioned my growing interest to the Nursing Manager at Redfern one day and a short time later was asked if I wanted to work with the Manager of Information Systems in getting statistical data onto desktop computers.
Within about a year I had completed my informal 'apprenticeship' (and the Grad. Dip.) and had gradually swapped clinical nursing for Health Information Technology, based at Sydney's Rozelle Hospital. During this time I was asked by the then Professor of Psychiatry (now the Governor of NSW) to run a Shared Care in Mental Health project, to give GPs increased training in Psychiatry. Afterwards I became the Manager for Information Systems for Central Sydney Area Mental Health Service and was developing systems and training clinical staff around the Area.
However travel (and a relationship) beckoned once again and I spent the next few years travelling between Australia and the Greek Islands. When I was in Sydney I picked up casual shifts at Northside Clinic - a third 'tour of duty'. In 1999 I took a position as a Team Leader at Compaq Computers. This was an interesting experience after so many years in Health. I was so used to nursing and government jobs and here I was on this massive industrial estate in Sydney's Western suburb of Regents Park.
I was considered a bit of an oddity (nothing new) being a Registered Nurse and also in charge of an IT department, but we had good people and some great laughs. One of my team's tasks was to supply computer systems to Australian forces who were serving in East Timor at the time. The systems had to be robust enough to be run from a generator in the middle of a field if necessary.
Another highlight of the brief time at Compaq was winning exclusive tickets at work to be at the Sydney fireworks celebrations, on the eve of December 31st 1999. Sydney Harbour was teeming with boats and yatchs and huge ships and Circular Quay was just a total blanket of people. We had access to see-in the year 2000 from the steps of Opera House, watching the fireworks going off right in front of us on the Harbour Bridge. There were helicopters and TV crews and a huge outside music concert, including Kylie Minogue, Jimmy Barnes and Vanessa Amorosi. It was a totally unforgettable experience.
If 1999 ended on a peak, then 2000 was to provide perhaps the lowest moment. I love Sydney, but the big city life was getting to me a bit. I was travelling 3 hours a day to and from work. The end of the relationship hit me hard and signalled the last thing really keeping me there.
I returned to a beloved Tasmania in mid-2000. I'd arrived in Tassie with a motorbike and a backpack in 1990 and now I was returning to Launceston in 2000 in a jeep, with a decade's worth of stuff and experiences behind me.
It was totally weird being back in Tasmania. Some things had changed and yet others were familiar. I now had a 10 year history of being an Australian. I certainly didn't 'belong' in England any more and Sydney had become home. Fortunately somebody somewhere was looking after me, as usual. I got a job with TAFE Tasmania within a few weeks, teaching Information Technology of all things. I was also able to keep my hand in with nursing through the Department of Psychiatry, working at a community mental health rehabilitation unit called Howard Hill in Longford. Looking back though, I was rather spun out for quite a long time. It probably took me two years to find myself again.
Rekindling previous relationships, working and buying a house had helped the process along and I settled into my new life. Working at TAFE was just great. It gave me a chance to further develop my own IT knowledge as well as teach students, which I love doing. I got to undertake more training and gain more certification in both the IT and VET (Vocational Education & Training) field. It was also the longest time I've spent with one employer.
Longest time indeed. However after seven years of teaching Information Technology, I felt I was plateauing a bit and started looking at the options. The sense of Synchronicity which had seemed to influence a large part of my professional life was about to influence another set of fortuitous twists. I applied for a new position which had just come up within TAFE's Health Aged Care and Enrolled Nursing programme. And having kept current with my nursing practice, I was suddenly shifted from teaching IT to teaching Nursing, literally across the road from my old job.
It was another weird experience. I was still working for TAFE but I was teaching in my other area of speciality. Now perhaps, computing would take a back seat to nursing.
Perhaps not. As it turned out, my technical and nursing background were about to influence events once more. In 2008 I undertook a Masters Degree in Clinical Nursing at the University of Tasmania. It seemed like a good thing to do, keeping up to date, keeping the old brain stimulated. However, when they found out about my background it was suggested I might like to consider working for the University.
The uni had just invested millions in a new simulation centre for training nursing and medical students. Closely resembling a pukka acute clinical facility, the centre housed a number of 'Sim People' - simulated humans on whom clinicians could practise their skills at resuscitation and other interventions (www.simulationcentre.com.au). It was a time of developing cutting-edge training facilities at campuses in Tasmania and Sydney and I also lectured in med/surg/psych Nursing at the Tassie campus.
However much as I love teaching, I began once again hankering for life at the coalface of psychiatry.. 2010 saw a return to clinical work with time spent in the acute inpatient unit followed by a stint as CNS with the community mental health team.
Now I am working in primary mental health with GPs who refer patients for psychotherapy (www.practicenursing.net) and treatment for more severe forms of mental illness. I work independently with my own caseload. There are virtually zero politics. Medicare picks up the tab and everybody wins. Life has never been better. What's not to like..?
