Kari takes on Far North Role

QAS’s new Deputy Commissioner Operations, North and Rural and Remote Kari Arbouin may hail from Glasgow, the Friendliest City in the World, but her early career move in 1990 to Julia Creek nearly 15,200km away created the perfect foundation for this role.

Kari took over the reins from Gerard Lawler in June and has hit the ground running, travelling around the region meeting staff and reinvigorating her health network contacts.

While she may not have a paramedic background, health has been a common thread and passion throughout Kari’s career.

“After narrowly missing out on a competitive medical place at Glasgow University, I was instead offered a place in Dentistry which I found unappealing so at last minute I switched to nursing, not really sure that at the time it was what I wanted to do either,” Kari said.

“Nursing in Glasgow was pretty intense, and I gained lots of experience in trauma, working in the Emergency Department at the Royal Glasgow Infirmary, the busiest ED in Western Europe.

“After a few years, including a year working with a French pharmaceutical company in marketing, I bought a oneway ticket to Australia, a place I had always wanted to travel around, but with the intention of coming back to Scotland, confidently telling my Mum and Dad I would be back in nine months.

“Leaving Scotland, I felt confident about what I would do, but arriving in Melbourne I felt lost and homesick with only $400 to my name,” Kari said.

“After two days I landed a job teaching children swimming (having competed at a national level in Scotland and with a father who was a world champion polo player) until my nursing registration came through and then took on relief nursing jobs throughout Victoria before working my way north through New South Wales and into Queensland.

“I arrived in Townsville close to running out of money and agreed to a six-week position at Julia Creek.

“Shortly after I got there, cyclone season hit and the surrounding areas flooded, the roads were cut, and I was asked to stay on for a few more months.”

Kari grew up in a 270-year-old manse to a castle in the middle of a wood with a graveyard at the bottom of the garden, and where in winter she’d enjoy skiing in the Scottish Highlands and skating on the pond – a stark contrast to the 40-degree heat, dirt and dust of the Julia Creek landscape.

“I didn’t think I’d last 6 weeks,” Kari remembers.

Six months later, the outback town and its people had grown on her and Kari found herself applying and being successful in the role of Director of Nursing.

But what was it about working in that rural and remote region that kept Kari there?

“I’d worked in large hospitals in Glasgow where all my patients were strangers to me,” Kari said.

“The experience is so very different in a small rural community.

“I quickly got to know every patient and their families, and through time, their life stories.

“I was present when they had their children and sadly, I was there too when they lost family and well-loved community members.

“As a health team we were everything we could be to the community; councillor,

pharmacist, radiologist, sometimes even requiring to be the local vet or dentist.

“In real emergencies everyone chipped in with off duty nurses turning up to the hospital, the paramedic staying on and even the cook and cleaning staff turning up to make food or clean up.

“I had never experienced such community spirit.”

Kari’s achievements shone through with the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards (ACHS) awarding Julia Creek Hospital full accreditation hospital; an accomplishment no other western Queensland hospital had managed to do. “I wanted to show that the small hospitals could have a comparable standard of care to those larger metro hospitals and with a team of committed nursing staff and GP, and we did it.”

She remembers the lead up to the survey as one of her biggest challenges.

“When we were frantically preparing for the day the surveyors arrived, I was pregnant at the time, with my due date being the actual date of the survey and I promised my team I wouldn’t go into labour,” she said.

“I remember sitting on the floor of my office night after night, writing procedure manuals on a typewriter because it was the most comfortable position.”

In case you’re wondering, Kari didn’t go into labour on survey day, and later, she went on to assist many of the other North West rural hospitals gain their accreditation.

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Kari said the team also would get involved in community events, providing first aid support or health promotion talks to help the community.

But one year during her tenure, Kari earned a new and unusual title … of Champion Bog Snorkeller.

“The Dirt and Dust Triathlon started when I was working out there, and as usual, myself and other staff would provide first aid and would also get involved in the competition,” Kari said.

“One year the organisers brought out the world bog snorkelling champion from Ireland to compete and I beat her, so I won the title of Champion Bog Snorkeller which I held onto for three or so years.

“She wasn’t too impressed about that, but I believe I was the legitimate champion particularly as my bog snorkelling win involved having cane toads thrown onto me by the local kids while I was swimming!”

Kari’s time in Julia Creek lasted seven years and her achievements during this time, were recognised with an Australia Day award and a Queensland Health award for outstanding service.

She said while she and her family left the community when her children were young, the connection has remained, and they are still considered very much part of the community whenever they return.

Kari then went on to take on the Director of Clinical Services role at a private Townsville-based hospital in the late 1990s.

“One of the great things about nursing is that so many of its skills are transferrable – in many ways it’s similar to paramedicine – you learn how to deal with a range of people often at the worst time of their lives and work through this negotiating conflict, empathising and working towards the best clinical solution and always with the best interests of the patient. Kari said.

After years of being on call 24/7 call and with a young family, Kari decided to take a break from health before moving into the university sector in the early 2000s.

“This type of work, as passionate as you might be about it, does takes a toll and I needed some time away from health, so I worked at James Cook University in a variety of senior leadership roles and really loved expanding my experience

to a sector I didn’t really know,” she said.

For example, I worked for several months as interim CEO of JCU’s Singapore campus, where I had a great experience in Singapore.

“It taught me valuable lessons in working with a different culture and the need to listen and be open to a variety of perspectives.”

Another role at JCU included overseeing the university’s boating and diving infrastructure, along with managing Orpheus Island’s research station.

“This was something a little out of the box given my background, but my partner is a marine biologist, so it was a great way to understand the needs of the researchers who worked there, and of course, I became the honorary research assistant when needed.”

In 2000 Central Queensland University approached Kari to develop a business case for a campus in Townsville and Cairns, which she did successfully, taking on the role of Associate Vice Chancellor for the Townsville campus and Northwest, overseeing the building of the campus, and delivering a range of courses starting with paramedicine.

“Paramedicine was popular with students right across the North, who were studying by distance, but then had to travel to Rockhampton for their clinical skills,” Kari said.

“I felt sure that if we had a campus which could support their study there would be a greater chance of them not only being successful due to this, and having family support close by, but that they remained and committed to working in this region.

Kari maintained a close link to health during this time, taking on board and committee roles with the Northwest Hospital and Health Service until 2020 when she was appointed the newly established Office of Rural and Remote Health’s inaugural Executive Director at Queensland Health.

Kari said on taking this Deputy Commissioner role for the North, her focus will also be on the Rural and Remote communities.

“I have a passion for these communities, and I believe we need to focus on what each community needs and work together as health professionals if we are ever to improve the health outcomes for these communities,” she said.

Given how well she knows the North and has lived and worked in Townsville, Kari said she’s currently focussed on getting to know and supporting her new Assistant Commissioners based in Rockhampton, Townsville and Cairns.

Kari said she would like to quickly get out to as many of the rural and remote communities as she can, particularly the areas with the single-officer station communities to better understand their unique challenges.

“I’m hoping to use these first few months to learn and build a better understanding of the services that QAS services in the North and meet the staff and local ambulance committee members,” Kari said.

“I am really excited about the new QAS Strategy.

“From past experience this strategy, which I can see has lots of input from our workforce, is a great opportunity to focus all of QAS on one vision.

“I want to ensure I provide clarity to that vision and support the Assistant Commissioner, Directors and staff in understanding how they can contribute to making QAS the best service it can be.

“I intend to lead with courage and curiosity: to ask the hard questions about what we do as a service and why we do things the way do. I hope then that this encourages my team in the North to do the same and in turn have their staff challenge how we might do things differently.

“We’ve gone through challenges over the last few years with COVID, but there are significant opportunities for us to consider how we can use these experiences to change health care and deliver high quality services smarter, particularly in the rural and remote communities where access to services can be inequitable.”

Kari said in previous organisations culture had been extremely important and she identified the need for a strong culture to support each other.

“As health professionals we’re often very good at being compassionate about our patients but not so good at looking after ourselves and each other so I’m hoping to contribute to developing a culture that emphasises health, safety and wellbeing so that our people flourish,” Kari said.

“I’m here to bring an external perspective to QAS and I want to see what I can do to really support that in the leaders here – to build capacity of an organisation which is only limited by the capacity of its leaders and to look at how we can have our leaders flourish.”

Kari’s use of the word “flourish” coincidently takes us back to her birthplace – it appears unconsciously she has brought a little bit of “home” to share in her own way with QAS, as Glasgow’s coat of arms motto is Let Glasgow Flourish.

■ Since leaving Scotland, Kari has continued her strong sense of adventure from diving with bull sharks in Fiji, hiking to Everest Base Camp and the Inca trail to Machu Pichu and swimming with Piranhas in the deepest Amazon. She is an avid skier and snowboarder and is always chasing the next outdoor adventure.

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