Midwife

Mid wife Lyn Olsen is this year’s winner of Australia’s top nursing award.

She was named Nurse of the Year — from a field of more than 400 — in the HESTA awards.

Based at Bunurong Health Service in Dandenong, Olsen was nominated for her outstanding commitment to Aboriginal women’s health.

As the award winner, she received $10,000 for education and travel.

“I would like to attend an international conference on Aboriginals and to see the animals in Africa,” she says.

Olsen started her nursing at Prince Henry’s Hospital in Melbourne and in a career spanning 40 years has worked in general care, emergency, midwifery and community nursing.

She has worked for the past five years at Bunurong, an Aboriginal maternal health organisation.

“My aim is to keep the children healthy through their antenatal care so they begin life at the starting line and not behind it,” she says.

“I’m happy to say our immunisation rates are above the required 90 per cent.”

As a full-time midwife, Olsen cares for low-risk mothers and their babies, educating the women from before they conceive and throughout their pregnancy, checking the mothers’ physical and emotional health. Those with high-risk pregnancies are helped to liaise with specialists.

“I’m given the chance to care for the women’s general wellbeing, how they and their families are,” she says.

“It’s a totally different approach from being a midwife or nurse in most other situations.

“If a woman wants me present during the birth I will do that, but it’s not compulsory.

“Last week a woman had her labour induced and I stayed with her until 20 minutes after the birth, leaving her with her partner and the baby.

“It was a 1am birth and I’d started at 9am, but this is part of what I feel I need to do. It’s not just the eight hours in the hospital being present at the birth and waiting for their next child to be born.”

Olsen also drives patients to specialist appointments, arranges off-site visits and runs a playgroup to involve mothers in health care.

Being a mother herself, she knows much of what the women are going through.

“Sometimes it’s easier to go to their home and do the antenatal class,” she says.

Her commitment to care includes being on call 24 hours a day, organising her holidays around patients’ delivery dates and being there to explain medical jargon, the importance of breastfeeding and the risks of drinking and smoking.

“Every woman has my number and can ring me any time if she is worried. But they respect me and won’t call me out of hours unless they have to,” she says.

Mostly working Monday to Friday, Olsen still finds time for her two hobbies ““ scouting and caring for injured wildlife.