ANMF (Vic Branch) was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Elizabeth (Liz) Hulme.
When Liz began nursing in 1951, junior nurses started their day at 4.45am, only got one day off a week and their job included juicing oranges for patients’ drinks. Over her 40-year career, Liz saw many positive changes in the profession, and as a member and later a professional officer with the Victorian Branch of the (then) Australian Nursing Federation (ANF), she was involved in helping usher in some of those changes.
In her clinical practice, Liz worked at several Melbourne hospitals, as well as in London, Jamaica and Toronto.
In 1989, Liz joined ANF as the Branch’s first Special Interest Group Coordinator, a position she held until 1997. Special interest groups, or SIGs as they were commonly called, were rank-and-file membership professional-interest collectives for nurses and midwives working in everything from aged care to research to urology. Today they are known as ANMF Reference Groups.
Liz loved working with the SIGs. ‘They were professional nurses who really gave up their time, above their work, to progress their own speciality,’ she told the Australian Nursing Journal in 1999, not long after she retired. ‘I think they are the most committed nurses.’
In that same year, the Branch awarded the inaugural $3000 Elizabeth Hulme Special Interest Group Annual Research grant, to help support a recipient (or a group of recipients) to undertake clinical nursing research or higher education study in a relevant area of practice. The first recipients were Kirsten James and Trish Dunning with a research project supported by the Complementary Therapies SIG.
In 2024, the Branch renamed our $10,000 Higher Education and Research Grant to honour Elizabeth’s significant contribution to the Branch, and to Victorian nursing.
ANMF (Vic Branch) sends its condolences to Liz’s family and friends.
