Remote area nurses scared for their safety as violence is ‘brushed under the carpet’

AFTER Gayle Woodford’s body was found in a shallow grave, fellow nurses took to social media to declare “that could’ve been me”.

-BUDGET- Practice Nurse Gayle Woodford (L) with Viv Martin (R) in the trauma room attending to a patient at the Minlaton Medical Surgery, Minlaton, 2hrs east of Adelaide. Pic: Lindsay Moller / Adelaide.

LAST month the body of Gayle Woodford, a remote area nurse, was found in a shallow grave near where she’d been working in Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia.

A 34-year old man has been charged with the mother-of-two’s murder.

For remote area nurses, Ms Woodford’s death highlighted how they’ve felt for a long time: vulnerable and unsupported.

“Over the last fortnight we’ve all been saying, ‘That could have been me,’” says Helen Zahos, a registered nurse who worked in the APY Lands from 2006 to 2009.

“We’ve all had so many close calls that could have gone really wrong,” she says.

Since the tragedy, nurses have taken to social media to share terrifying stories of threats and violence they’ve faced on the job, including black eyes and sexual assaults.

Helen has a list of frightening incidents from when she worked as remote area nurse.

“My first placement was in Pukatja/Ernabella,” she says, “I was sent out there because the clinic had been burnt down by a man who the nurse refused to give Panadol to. So that was my introduction to the APY lands!

“It wasn’t uncommon to have rocks thrown at the clinic or our work cars,” Helen says of her time in the APY Lands.

“Our ambulances would often have bricks thrown at their windows.”

In 2009 Helen was attacked with an axe and held up with a spear while working in Watarru, about 200km from Fregon. She says the incident was “brushed under the carpet” by authorities.

“I was working alone and I heard a noise outside the clinic. I thought it was just kids throwing rocks so I went outside. As I stuck my head out the door an axe came flying at my face and embedded in the door,” she says.

Helen says the man followed her in to the clinic with the axe and a spear and threw the axe at her again when she was cornered in the back of the clinic. Thankfully the axe fell short and she wasn’t physically harmed.

“When the police eventually came out — it took three or four hours because they were quite far away — they didn’t arrest him. They said because the axe didn’t touch me it wasn’t assault and they joked around about it. Then they bought him a sandwich because he said he was hungry and that was it.”

Helen says she felt let down and unsupported by the police. That seems to be a common feeling among remote area nurses.

“You try to deal with things as best you can and try to only call the police when it’s quite serious,” Helen says, “But if your back-up isn’t on you side, you think, ‘What am I doing?’ Because you really are vulnerable out there.”

Nurses in remote areas often work alone and when they’re on call patients attend their home at all hours of the night for treatment. A few remote area nurses say it’s common practice to send male patients away unless they’re accompanied by two females from the community. But other than that, there are no safety measures in place. Many nurses have horror stories just from answering their door bell in the middle of the night.

“There’s a lot of domestic violence (in remote areas) and often it would happen out the front of your house,” Helen says. “The patient — the woman — would come running to the house for help and then the man would continue kicking the woman on the ground out front. If you intervene, he’d attack you too.”

Forensics inspecting the remote site where Gayle’s body was found. Remote area nurses often have to work alone in isolated areas. Picture: Simon Cross

Helen says a lot of the problems faced by remote area nurses come down to a lack of police presence.

“There are communities that have nurses, medical teams and teachers but no police,” she says. “Police need to look into ways of improving their coverage out there.”

Ms Woodford’s death sparked a petition to the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and the Minister for Rural Health to improve safety of remote area nurses. The remote area nursing community wants an end single nurse postings and for it to be mandatory that at least two responders attend all after hours call-outs.

The petition already has more than 130,000 signatures.

But in a statement last Wednesday Minister for Rural Health, Senator Fiona Nash, denied responsibility for remote area nurses’ safety and said, “Whilst the Federal Government funds many of these remote services, they are in fact independently run, as they should be.”

The organisation that runs clinics in the APY Lands and employed both Helen and Ms Woodford, Nganampa Health Council, refused to comment on the issue of remote area nurse safety when contacted by news.com.au.

Helen says after the axe incident, Nganampa Health Council organised for her to be on the next flight out of the area and provided her with counselling. But no meaningful changes were made to improve the safety of nurses’ in the APY Lands.

“I wonder if I had fought harder for change back then, could (Ms Woodford’s death) have been prevented?” Helen says.

This time she hopes that the conversation around safety of remote area nurses will continue long and loud enough for authorities to listen in and step up. And not just for the sake of nurses.

“If things don’t change, the communities are going to suffer,” Helen says. “No nurse is going to want to work out in these remote areas.”

Nganampa Health Council was contacted and refused to comment on safety of remote area nurses in APY Lands.