Joanna Martin, a Registered Nurse with more than 18 years’ experience across a range of healthcare fields, was recently awarded Nurse of the Year by the Northern NSW Local Health District. She sat down with Darlene Cook earlier this week to tell us her life story.

I was born in Sydney on Gadigal land in the 1980s at the King George V Memorial Hospital for Mothers and Babies at Camperdown near Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the eldest of two children. My parents were both Sydney University graduates; my father was a chemical engineer, and my mother started off in agriculture but then changed to teaching – she became a special needs teacher.  

I had a lovely childhood with my younger sister playing around Stanmore, where I grew up, attending Stanmore Public School for my primary years. We were lucky to also spend a lot of time in the Hunter Valley at my parents’ bush property and on the south coast in Ulladulla, where my mum’s family lived. 

(Joanna at Primary School)

I moved to Newtown High School of the Performing Arts for my high school years; I was mainly interested in piano, flute and voice. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep this going – I was a bit distracted by the social life that Newtown can offer!  

I completed my HSC wanting to go to the University of Sydney to study speech pathology; however, I was once again preoccupied with my social life and missed the cutoff date to submit my course preferences. Mum saved the day by marching down to the Mallet St Camperdown Nursing Campus for USyd and begging for them to give me a place as a late entry, a couple of weeks before the course started. My plan was to transfer to speech pathology, but after a couple of hospital placements, I decided it wasn’t for me. 

My decision to enrol in nursing was cemented one day when I was on the train with my family, when a stranger, an eccentric little old lady wearing a red and white striped tracksuit, struck up a conversation and said, “You know, you really look like a nurse”. This was before I started nursing, but it had quite an influence on me – I still remember it quite clearly to this day. She also asked my mum how old “her father” was, not realising she was referring to my dad, mum’s husband –awkward! 

The Nursing degree was a 3-year degree then; in my 1st year, I did a unit on health issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – it’s a mandatory unit in the degree. It was an eye opener for me; I was unaware of the impact of colonisation on First Nations people, as we didn’t study it at school, nor the ongoing and direct connection that it has to today’s health issues for our First Nations people. Learning this compelled me to change my study pathway, changing to a four-year nursing degree called Bachelor of Nursing, Indigenous Australian Health.

I was very privileged in that time to be taught by First Nations academics in nursing, and I treasure the special information imparted to me by those women, and the opportunity to work with numerous First Nations organisations, including the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, observing first-hand how important these services are for the community.  

Part of the degree meant that I spent a few months in Broken Hill, Wilcannia and Menindee on Barkindji Country. These smaller communities exposed me to what rural and remote health care really looked like – where nurses are everything to the community. We had to be able to do anything and everything, including driving the ambulance to help clear kangaroos off the airstrip so the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane could safely land. You kind of had to be able to do it all. 

(Joanna doing an outreach wellness check on Menindee Lake in remote NSW)

It was a really good nursing experience; it was an important post - there was no onsite medical support in the town; you relied on the RFDS for help if needed. But there was incredibly good support from the other nurses. It was an interesting time for me career-wise and I’ve always felt drawn to go back to regional and remote areas. 

I came back to Sydney and got a position at St Vincent's in Darlinghurst’s emergency department. It was supposed to be part of a rotation to other medical areas; I had been considering moving to paediatrics, because that was what I really wanted to do, but I just really loved the emergency work, so I stayed on working in ED for many years.   

St Vincent's Darlinghurst is just near Kings Cross and the pressure of the high volumes of patients coming through, while stressful, also built up a camaraderie that helped pull you through some of the really challenging cases. Also, the sense of connection to community you get from looking after some of the really prominent local people and particularly with the homeless community, the relationships we built were quite lovely. 

One claim to fame is that I appeared on Channel 9’s Kings Cross ER while working at St Vincent's! Kings Cross ER was a unique, fly-on-the-wall look at the experiences of the staff and patients at the always busy emergency department at St Vincent's Hospital. 

Back then, I really liked the high-powered, fast-paced variety of emergency department work; it also offered a pathway to career progression in nursing, which was influenced by some great colleagues, nurse educators and clinical nurse consultants who were really passionate about developing younger nurses’ careers. 

(Jo with Ciggy Butt at a Koori Knockout at Henson Park Oval promoting the Quit Campaign for NSW Health)

I guess some people are really drawn to ED work for many reasons. Something I really appreciate about the work I’ve done there is that I’ve made lots of long-lasting friendships. Tim Ayers is one of the Clinical Nurse Consultants with the Movement Disorder Neurology Service here, and his wife Gemma is a Midwife at LBH and are both still close friends who I met back at St Vincent's ED. They welcomed their second new baby just this morning; congratulations Tim, Gemma and Amelia!! 

I met my husband Chris when working in emergency – he was a paramedic at that time. After a few years together, we decided to move to what we thought would be a slower pace of work life – to the Northern Rivers. 

We did a sea change in 2013 – moved to Byron for the proper sea change life; back then, you could afford to live in Byron. After we moved out of our rental, the prices went through the roof! I worked at Ballina hospital ED on their casual pool very briefly before applying for a job in Lismore at the Base Hospital, again working in emergency as a clinical nurse specialist for some of this time.  

Lismore Base Hospital’s ED has a great team there as well with the same sense of camaraderie and connection over the work. I still have lovely friends from my time there. I met my current manager, Kath Shaw, also a nurse, in the Lismore Base ED. When I told people I had worked at the infamous “Kings Cross ER”, they would say, “Gosh you have seen some things”, and my response was “yes, but we see more at Lismore Base”.

The huge geographical area, combined with isolation, economic pressure, natural disasters and limited resources, made this probably the most challenging environment to work in. I think this was highlighted for me, coming from the city where everything is at your fingertips. 

After working in Lismore for a few years, I had my first baby. We now have three boys, who are 9, 6, and 4 years old. Getting that work-life balance was essential. My husband Chris is currently studying for his Master's in Primary Teaching, so I am fortunate that with shiftwork and Chris studying, I could still progress my career while we were having our children. 

We’ve always managed the balance quite well, working shiftwork helps with that, but we still rely on childcare and daycare services. With Northern Rivers Family Daycare, we were lucky again in getting into the system before some of the barriers to getting into childcare started happening. Similarly, we bought our house just before the prices really rose exponentially; we know how lucky we are. We don’t have family to rely on up here, so it’s just us doing it.  

During this time, I moved back to Ballina ED to work closer to home, which is also a great department, where teamwork is essential in keeping chaos at bay. After our first baby arrived, I started to think that emergency wasn’t for me anymore, especially the thought of potentially having to work each Christmas and miss out on sharing those important times with the children. I think I made that a firm decision when my eldest boy was about two.  

I enrolled with the Australian College of Nursing and did a Graduate Certificate in Child and Family Health. This work is a community-based role with no shift work. With this role, every woman who has a baby gets offered a visit from a specialist Child and Family health nurse, who support swomen and families to be the best parents they can be, do child development checks and provide immunisations.

I worked in the role at a few locations, mainly Lismore and Goonellabah, and for a short time at Casino, casually for a couple of years after having my third baby. I think I am still an ED nurse at heart, but it was the right decision at the time. I still work casually in community health, as a nurse audiometrist, supported by this local health district to complete the study required for the role last year. 

In 2022, another new direction saw the opportunity for my current permanent role as a Domestic Violence Prevention Officer. I was talking to an old friend from ED, Kath, who was just leaving this position. I thought it sounded like a good role for me, but the position had already been filled. However, it was readvertised about four weeks later, and I applied and was successful. My role is to support health staff to identify and respond to Domestic Violence.  

There are many factors that contribute to the impacts of violence. Supporting health staff to have the knowledge around this, and to be trauma-informed as part of our response to people, is a huge part of my role. We look less at the “what” people do and the ways in which they present to health services, and more to the reasons “why”; what experiences have they had in their life that make them vulnerable. This is so important because we know that our responses to people really affect how and whether or not they later seek more help after those initial responses. 

(Joanna Martin - Nurse of the Year)

My role comes under the policy and programs team within the Integrated Prevention and Response to Violence Abuse and Neglect (IPARVAN) service. This is a strategic role concerned with supporting the health policy around family violence, staff responses to clients disclosing domestic violence, prevention work and education. 

Maintaining connections with non-government services in the sector is a big part of the role, too, knowing that many of our clients rely on these services to provide other needs outside of health, such as legal advice or financial assistance. I can really see how the IPARVAN team definitely makes a difference; they are totally dedicated, and our managers are supportive and approachable. They make it really easy to do well and achieve great outcomes. 

In time I would certainly like to see no need for this kind of work; it’s not a reality, but hopefully the small steps we take do make a difference. Statistics indicate it’s not getting better, however it is common knowledge that this is a very difficult area to collect data on. Positively we do know that community attitudes to domestic violence are improving, which is one aspect of change needed to address it on the whole. 

What’s in the future? I feel I will stay in this role for some time; the position is so interesting, my managers and team are very supportive, and flexible around my days so I can do clinical work outside of my two set days in this role. I still do casual clinical work as an Audiometry Nurse with Community Health. 

Outside of work, I really enjoy walking and being as active as I can, but I’m not really interested in team sports; I’m just not competitive in that way. I like cycling – the whole family has done parts of the rail trail – the kids love their bikes. I love camping and exploring the region.  

I love my books; I’m a very eclectic reader; I’ll read anything anyone hands me, really, happy to give it a go; I belong to two library book clubs and the kids are all readers too. My 9-year-old is into Harry Potter and fantasy action books.  

I’ve come back to playing piano again after many years; no particular style – just self-entertainment – I enjoy tackling classical pieces as well as well-known pop ballads. The kids are keen for me to master the very famous Rimsky-Korsakov piece, which is unlikely but I may give it a go! My kids are also learning and enjoying the piano. 

I go to community events if they interest me; I attended parts of the Lismore Women's Festival, and I’ll probably drop into the writers’ festival this month and catch up with friends.  

We have a dog – a bitza girl called Sookie – named after a famous vampire novel heroine, but her name also reflects part of her persona! She and the kids love to get to the beach whenever we can – just so they can bring tons of sand home with them.  

The boys are heavily involved with soccer; they love the game and all of them are in teams. Chris coaches one of the teams.   

Ideally, I’d love to see my boys grow up to be gentle and open and not affected by this culture of misogyny that many are born into. All we can do is set a good example for them at home.