97 years is a long time in anyone\u2019s book.<\/p>\n
TWO staff at Ararat\u2019s Gorrinn House share a remarkable 97 years of service between them as they continue to serve the needs of their residents.<\/p>\n
CEO and Director of Care Robyn Woods-Gebler has 50 years nursing and Clinical Supervisor Jo Simmonds 47 years, but they both admit retirement is on the distant horizon.<\/p>\n
Ms Woods-Gerber commenced nurse training at Sale\u2019s Gippsland Base Hospital in 1972 before moving to St Vincent\u2019s Hospital for six years to do a critical care course.<\/p>\n
She came to Ararat Hospital to run what was then the Intensive Care Unit in 1982, and then started at Gorrinn House (Ararat Retirement Village) in 2005.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came for six months and 40 years later I\u2019m still working in Ararat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Simmonds began training at Ballarat\u2019s St John of God Hospital in 1975, graduating in 1978. She then moved to Geelong\u2019s St John of God Hospital before moving to Ararat Hospital in 1985 where she worked in the acute and surgical wards. She came to Gorrinn House in 2012.<\/p>\n
Things have changed a lot since the pair started.<\/p>\n
Ms Woods-Gebler said back in the day, nursing was a lifelong career.<\/p>\n
\u201cNurses generally didn\u2019t change careers in those days. I don\u2019t know if the younger generation will do that but we both have had the opportunity of working in lots of different areas (of nursing),\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been an enormous number of changes in health care and medicine. Some of the things we did as students in the 1970s just haven\u2019t existed for 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTraining is very different today. We were hospital trained not Uni trained,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Simmonds also said nursing is vastly different to 1975.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had glass syringes when I started and they were sterilised and reused,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso nurses have now taken on a much bigger role. We probably put a lot more pressure on ourself because we wanted to do more to help the doctors. For instance, we never used to do intravenous cannulations or a number of other things but we do it all now,\u201d Ms Simmonds said.<\/p>\n
Ms Woods-Gebler agrees, saying nurses have evolved over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Emergency in Ararat, even though they call it Urgent Care now, there were no doctors on site so the lone nurse in the emergency department did everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d come to the emergency department and it would be the nurse that decided whether you needed to see a doctor. We probably did about a third of things completely alone so we were kind of nurse-practitioners before nurse-practitioners existed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Woods-Gebler said good nurses need to be curious and ask questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things we have to do is cultivate curiosity in the younger generation of nurses. They\u2019ve got to stick their noses into things and find out what is going on, not just go with the flow and do the job.\u00a0 The difference between an adequate nurse and a great nurse is doing that little bit more, finding out a bit more and never stop learning as well as keeping up to date,\u201d Ms Woods-Gebler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still google things if we haven\u2019t heard of something. We\u2019re big stickybeaks, to be a good nurse you need to be a stickybeak. The doctors might call that a different name of course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Woods-Gebler said Gorrinn House has a different way of managing the needs of its residents compared with some other aged care facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cAged care is not hard, you just need enough people to do the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never understood why people assume that everyone who goes into aged care automatically deteriorates. Surely, if you are not looking after yourself at home and go into care you should get better,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFunding is for increasing dependency, the more you do for them, the more funding you get. If I stuck everyone in bed, we\u2019d get massive amounts of funding, but because everyone (here) is up as much as they can be, our funding isn\u2019t as good as other facilities because our residents get healthier,\u201d Ms Woods-Gebler said.<\/p>\n
As for the future, both women have retirement in their sights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll probably move on when the new building is complete,\u201d Ms Woods-Gebler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do a lot of things, I make things, I do all sorts of home renovation, so I have plenty to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mr Simmonds said she will spend more time with her family, especially the grandkids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I will find it very hard to actually stop and not be a nurse anymore. It\u2019s going to be a different life, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRobyn says I can\u2019t leave until she does and the new building is built but that\u2019s still another good 12 months away,\u201d Ms Simmonds said with a smile.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
97 years is a long time in anyone\u2019s book.
\nTWO staff at Ararat\u2019s Gorrinn House share a remarkable 97 years of service between them as they continue to serve the needs of their residents.
\nCEO and Director of Care Robyn Woods-Gebler has 50 years nursing and Clinical Supervisor Jo Simmonds 47 years, but they both admit retirement is on the distant horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_8144-3-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-hh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1071"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}