Adjunct Professor Kathryn Zeitz PhD FACN, is the incoming Australian College of Nursing CEO.
Kathryn is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University and an Adjunct Professor at The University of Adelaide. Since 2017, she has been a nursing representative on the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority Clinical Advisory Committee. Outside her professional roles, Kathryn is dedicated to community service. She has previously been Chair of Variety SA and a Board Director for Variety Australia, for which she was awarded Life Membership in 2021. She is a longstanding volunteer and leader within St John Ambulance Australia, where she is currently a Board Director.
We sat down to talk to Kathryn about how her nursing career started and her vision for ACN and the nursing profession.
Can you talk about your background and share what led you to pursue a career in nursing?
It all started back in 1977, and my cousins were members of St John Ambulance Australia as cadets. Of course, everything my cousins wanted to do, I wanted to do. So, I joined the cadets as well. The cousins left, but I hung around and have had a lifelong association with St John. In Year 10, I was asked what I wanted to do for my work experience, and nursing suddenly became my ambition.
I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to undertake a university nursing degree. I was the first person in my family to get a degree, so my family thought it was a bit weird that I’d give up a paid hospital-based position to pursue my studies, but they supported me – and I supported myself as a Pizza Hut waitress. I initially commenced at Sturt College of Advanced Education in Adelaide (that then became Flinders University), and I was really only doing it while I was waiting for my hospital training position to come up. It became evident to me through that process that the future of nursing was in university education.
For the first 10 years of my career, I was grounded in clinical practice, particularly working in emergency departments at the Flinders Medical Centre. And then I was lucky to be able to undertake a range of nursing positions. Next, I worked for CRANAplus and developed their inaugural Remote Emergency Care program that still runs today.
It was then that my husband suggested I do a PhD. I thought he was crazy, and he said I was always complaining about nurses and vital sign collection, so I did my research on the nurse practices of vital sign collection in post-surgical settings.
From there, I took a position at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and that really started a career in clinical redesign, change management and organisational development. I was fortunate enough to lead the mental health division as I moved into operational management. I then went to St Vincent’s Health Service Sydney for two years, taking on a number of leadership positions before finally returning to Central Adelaide Local Health Network as the Executive Director, Clinical Governance and then Deputy CEO. It has been a varied professional journey.
How long have you been an ACN member and what motivated you to join?
Early on in my career I was keen to make sure I had an affiliation with a professional body, and that’s probably why I joined the Royal Australian College of Nursing, as it was known at the time, 30-plus years ago. I’ve continued my membership as it has always been a connection with the nursing profession. And I have always read The Hive.
What attracted you to the ACN CEO role?
Having worked in and led health systems for a number of years, we are really facing many challenges. Nurses are the largest workforce in the healthcare system, and so the opportunity to improve the way that care is delivered, and how health services are organised will come from us.
After 30 years of trying to improve the health system from within, I felt that this role afforded me the opportunity to influence the way health care is delivered from the outside, empowering and advocating for the important role the nursing workforce plays.
How do you see the role of nurses evolving into the future?
I feel the voice of medicine in shaping and designing healthcare delivery is not proportionate to the nursing voice. This is a one-dimensional view of how health care can be delivered and undervalues the significant contribution that I believe nursing has and can make. Nurses are the only healthcare professional group that cuts across the whole continuum of care.
Because of my background with CRANAplus, and having parents in residential aged care, I know that for a large proportion of the Australian population, especially rural and remote communities, their healthcare access is nursing-led. So, we already have models of nurse-led care and yet that does not translate to the broader health system. For example, nurses in the Torres Strait Islands are doing a whole range of procedures and delivery of health care that nurses in metropolitan emergency departments can’t do and that just does not make sense to me. So, increasing the scope of practice in nursing across the whole system and care continuum is an important opportunity to improve community access to healthcare.
What do you see as the most significant opportunity for nurses to make an impact and how can ACN members be a part of that change?
I think nurses can make an impact by advocating for different models of care and having a nursing workforce that is able to lead healthcare delivery into the future.
To achieve this, we need to provide systematic support to enable nurses to work to the top of their scope of practice, and we need to manage the supply and demand of the nursing workforce across the board (primary care, acute care, aged care etc.)
There are a number of ways that ACN members, and all nurses, can be part of the change – you need to be part of, as well as inform, the conversation. ACN members can be part of those conversations via several opportunities ACN provides, including the Policy Summit, our Faculties and Regional groups and the annual National Nursing Forum.
In what ways do you see ACN playing a role in shaping the future of nursing?
I think ACN has a broader role to play than just shaping the future of nursing, but also health care systems. In my early days in the role, I believe ACN is strongly situated to support the future of nursing in Australia and globally.
Our policy and advocacy work is really important to ensure nursing has a strong voice for the nursing profession, one that is representative of the diversity of the work nurses do.
The advocacy leads to the capability building of our nursing workforce, through our education and leadership development programs and the scholarships to provide financial support for nurses to pursue education in our programs. Our products range from the provision of clinical care right through to managing health services into the future.
We also need to prepare nurses for the significant change that we will all face in terms of digital transformation, the way we use digital technology and the way it not only impacts our everyday lives, but the way nurses do their work.
ACN continues to develop the products and tools to support nurses to succeed.
My outlook is very positive on the development of nursing and the role our profession will play in the healthcare system into the future. I wouldn’t have applied for the job otherwise. The opportunities for nurses to lead healthcare service delivery in Australia at all levels are very powerful. We need to harness that power to make sure that the community gets the best out of the health system that we have at hand.
Right now, for me, it is about spending time listening to our Membership, our Affiliates and our broader stakeholders to shape the purposeful direction of the College into the future. The journey is not linear.
This article was originally published in the Summer 2024 edition of ACN’s quarterly member publication The Hive. Members can access all past editions of The Hive on MyACN. Non-members can get a sneak peek by viewing our open-access articles.
