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Aussie nurse makes Taumarunui home
Taumarunui Hospital nurse practitioner Jane Jeffcoat takes nearly an hour to tell her life story.
It's an epic yarn, told with an Aussie twang, which starts in Sydney 50 years ago and ends with her move to Taumarunui this year.
Barely pausing for a breath, she talks about starting a career in health at age 14 as a volunteer, her OE in Europe and settling in the Coromandel with her Kiwi husband Carl, who was at first just a flatmate and friend before one day they looked at each other and realised there was more to their relationship.
The sun streams through Jeffcoat’s office on a brisk and clear autumn Taumarunui day. “I’m starting to feel like I own my job now and am not a visitor to this place anymore,” she says.
“People are used to me being around.”
You sense she is too. Everything about Taumarunui was new when she started in February including her appointment as a nurse practitioner with prescribing rights. Nurse practitioners are nurses who have completed advanced education and training in a specific area, in Jeffcoat’s case as an independent authorised practitioner under the Health Practitioners Competency Assurance Act.
“I was out of all my comfort zones,” she says.
The move to Taumarunui came about soon after she graduated as a nurse practitioner. At the time, she and her husband were living and working in Colville in the Coromandel. He ran the local mail run and she was working in a GP practice as a rural nurse running nurse led clinics in two different practices.
The satisfaction of graduation as a nurse practitioner was tempered by the fact she’d never get to practice if she stayed where she was.
A chance conversation with Waikato DHB change manager Grant O’Brien resulted in a trip to Taumarunui to see what the town was like.
“I’d asked him what was happening and if there were any roles for me. He said the only places where I could put what I had to good use were in South Waikato or the King Country.
“So we jumped in the car and came down to Taumarunui. We got a feel for the place. It offered a lot more than Coromandel did for us as a family.”
The couple have four children: Kate, 15, Matthew, 13, Andrew 11 and Sarah 9. The younger two love swimming and Taumarunui has a heated pool. A check of local schools and Education Review Office reports convinced them Turaki Primary School would be perfect.
Waikato DHB rural and community services group manager Jill Dibble submitted the business case for a nurse practitioner in Taumarunui and Tokoroa hospitals and sign off came through earlier this year. Jeffcoat applied for the job - there were other applicants - and was successful.
Taumarunui has seen a 200 per cent increase in triage three, four and five presentations. Jeffcoat is able to assess, treat and discharge many of these presentations and consult or refer others.
She is also active in working with developing nursing practice to an advanced and more autonomous level, in particular expanding nursing roles through the development of referral pathways.
An advanced paramedic trial started in Taumarunui ED in October last year. Paramedic Janet Curtis worked in the ED as a team member.
“There are a number of advantages including having highly trained ambulance staff being part of the ED resus team rather than dropping the patient at the door.
“One example was an elderly gentleman who was brought in by ambulance after a neighbour called 111. He had tripped and grazed his hand sustaining a large skin tear.
“The attending paramedic observed the management of the injury by me which required irrigation, repositioning of the flap, steri strips and dressing. He was otherwise well. The man was referred to the district nurses for ongoing care. Appropriately trained ambulance staff are now able to treat this type of uncomplicated injury at home and refer directly to the district nursing service for follow up.”
Nurse practitioners are not a substitute for doctors but they are an alternative and have a valuable role to play.
Jeffcoat loves health. As a girl in Oatley, Sydney she dreamed of being an anaesthetist.
At 14 she became a “candy striper” (hospital volunteer) at St George Hospital. She got to know the place well and was doing well enough at school to look at pursuing the dream.
However, in her final year at school, she got hepatitis - she had weeks off school, missing her final exams, which knocked her marks back She went into nursing instead.
“I was happy with the choice. I loved the acute stuff. I love the ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen next’ aspect of it. I loved the emergency department and theatres.”
So it was a bit out of left field when she ended up working as a midwife/perioperative nurse in Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. All part of the path for Jeffcoat, which she describes as happening for a reason.
In 1987, she went to the UK for her OE but struggled to get registration. She could not be a general nurse because all her post graduate experience was in operating theatres.
"I had to get one to three months experience on the wards or they wouldn’t register me. I tried to get work. I rang 12 hospitals in the greater London area. I was in despair.”
She went into the Anzac Nursing Agency and a woman there said she could get her a job at St Mary’s in Paddington. She stayed for six months and worked with a great team who made the work enjoyable.
Four years overseas included working in Turkey and Greece. She got the last plane out of Istanbul for Australia as the Gulf War started.
Back in Sydney, she got her old job back at St George Hospital and then a secondment to Canterbury Hospital as operating suite manager where they had built new operating theatres.
The next significant change came in 1993 when she and a friend advertised for a flatmate. “We wanted a man who was doing shiftwork and we didn’t want a nurse because we were both nurses.”
Enter Carl Jeffcoat, a New Zealander from Katikati who was managing a cool store.
“We got on like a house on fire. We were friends for months. We never had a first date – we’d all just go out. Then one day we looked at each other. It was something like in a movie.
“He’s always been a friend. He probably knows more things about my past because of that.”
They married in 1996. Four years later the opportunity came up for Carl to return to New Zealand to take over his father’s mail run in Coromandel.
Jane Jeffcoat got work as a practice nurse in the Colville Community Health Centre. While there she obtained a Waikato Primary Health scholarship to study for a masters in nursing, which she got with honours.
Today she not only works at Taumarunui Hospital but tutors post graduate nursing students at Wintec as an associate lecturer. In addition, undergraduate students spend time at the hospital for four weeks – usually a couple of placements per semester.
“They love it when they come here. They get a little bit of everything.”
Jeffcoat doesn’t have a bad word to say about Taumarunui “This is a great place to live and work. The hospital is innovative and there’s some good work going on. It is a great place to train people up.”
ENDS
Waikato District Health Board
Healthy People. Excellent Care
Waikato District Health Board (DHB) employs over 6500 people and plans, funds and provides hospital and health services to more than 391,770 people in a region covering eight per cent of New Zealand.
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