Kate Reid (second from right) with fellow ANMF (Vic Branch) Councillors Damian Hurrell, Mel Connan and Ruth Bloom
Kate Reid describes herself as an accidental nurse, and an accidental unionist.
‘My mother was a nurse. My grandmother was a nurse. Many of my aunties and cousins were nurses,’ says Kate. But her mother was hesitant to recommend Kate follow in the family line. ‘I think she felt it could be a tough row to hoe,’ Kate adds. ‘Mum enjoyed her nursing and found it personally rewarding but it wasn’t kind to her body over the years, and it could be emotionally taxing.’
With her mother steering her away from a career in nursing, teenage Kate thought she might instead become a physiotherapist. When that didn’t pan out, she enrolled in applied science. But this was another false start. With her mother’s words in her ear, she spent a few months really thinking about her future – and the more she thought the more she realised that the only path for her was to be a nurse. It’s as if she became a nurse in spite of everything, almost by accident.
Nearly three decades later, however, she’s not only still a nurse – she’s an ANMF Job Rep and Branch Council executive member. And she still loves being a nurse.
Kate works on the general medical ward at Goulburn Valley Health. She’s been there ever since her grad year – give or take a few rotations through other areas of the hospital early on. Since 2002, she has been a permanent ANUM on the ward.
Management ‘not my jam’
‘I’ve filled in in the management role,’ she says, ‘but I find that it takes me away from all the things that I love about nursing. It’s not my jam.’
One of the things Kate loves about nursing is the variety, especially in regional gen med. ‘Being at a large regional hospital,’ she says, ‘we don’t have specialty wards, so it’s quite a large general medical ward at 44 beds. I’ve always said: if you’re not having a baby, you’re not having an operation, you’re not a child and you don’t need to go to ICU, you come to us.’
Other than the addition of a respiratory ward that opened during the COVID pandemic, she clarifies, this continues to be the case.
Indeed, her family in Melbourne often ask her why she doesn’t return to the city where she grew up. ‘I just like the work here,’ she says. ‘I like the fact that it’s varied. I know that medical nursing is often perceived to be quite hard work but there’s a certain group of people that are happy to stay, and I guess they’re my people. It’s not really a glory role in any way, shape or form but I love it.’
The thing Kate loves most about nursing, however, is being an advocate for her patients. ‘It’s about knowing what’s going on with the patients,’ she says, ‘and chatting to them and finding out about how they are actually going, and really advocating for what they want. The patients are my passion.’
Path to unionism
If Kate came to nursing by accident – or fate, as the case may be – she also describes her path to unionism as accidental. The ward didn’t have a Job Rep, and thus no union point of contact during an EBA campaign. Realising this, Kate simply thought: ‘someone has to step up.’
Having stepped up, Kate has now been in the role for over a decade, and she loves it – for the same reason she loves being a nurse: advocacy. ‘I think a lot of the joy I get from being a Job Rep comes from advocating for my staff, and from being a point of information,’ she says. ‘I love being a point of information for my staff and during COVID, for instance, I became that for other wards as well – partly because I am also an ANMF (Vic Branch) Councillor.’
Kate’s journey to Branch Council was less accidental, she says: she was nominated for the role. ‘I was very shocked that anyone knew who I was or that I would be put forward for it,’ she says. ‘I’d been doing the same job for a long time, and when I got the call I thought it would be an opportunity to stretch myself.’
Kate became a Councillor around the time of the vote on the amendment to the Safe Patient Care Act legislation. ‘So learning about all the work involved – all the lobbying that had to occur to get people on side, to get the vote through – as well as the day-to-day running of the Branch to further the cause of nursing and midwifery in Victoria … it was a very, very big learning curve,’ she admits.
The power of ‘giving it a go’
‘For someone who talks a lot normally, that first six months I think I was fairly quiet; I thought: I don’t know what’s happening, and I’m just gonna stay quiet until I know what’s happening.’
But she did learn what was happening and ultimately became an executive member of Council. ‘That was another accident,’ she jokes. It was during COVID when the position became available. Kate wasn’t sure about the idea but having been a Councillor for several years by that point she decided that this was something she could probably do.
‘I was still very nervous about it,’ she says, ‘but I decided to give it a go.’
She’s glad she did. It’s expanded her knowledge of nursing in Victoria even further and helped her to become even more of a resource for her colleagues. ‘I’ve really enjoyed it,’ she says. ‘I’ve always enjoyed learning new things. And being able to be a resource to other people – I really enjoy that too.
‘I’m someone who has a fear of change, or a reluctance to make changes if I’m comfortable,’ she adds. ‘So that’s been a part of my not only accidental but maybe somewhat reluctant journey: they key is that having tried it, I’ve discovered I love it.’
