Chapter 12: 1985-95

It took only fifteen minutes walk to the university or ten minutes if I hastened and took bigger steps. As the university grew, there was not enough parking for staff and students. One had to be at work earlier to get reasonable parking nearest to the department where one worked. Consequently, I decided to walk to work unless there was a fair bit of work I had to take home. Often I had to take home papers for marking as there was often insufficient time to do marking or prepare of lessons for the next day's lectures. There were often meetings to attend or students to counsel or research work to be done at the library.

During my first three years at the university I enjoyed the teaching challenges. We had a very good departmental head. She was very diplomatic and a good manager. There was no bias and she handled conflicts among staff very well, at the same time as encouraging her staff to pursue the highest qualifications and standards for the School of Nursing. I had a lot of orientation to the health system and environment. There were two of us who started with a team of two lecturers and a Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing. The five of us were more or less foundation members of the School of Nursing who started the Associate Diploma of Nursing at Northern Territory University. Those were my happy years, giving me a great sense of contribution to the nursing profession. I had opportunities to meet the hierarchy, attend meetings and had a say in the construction of the nursing curriculum. I had initiated and participated in several activities such as developing the proposal for the Care Givers Course which was successful in obtaining DEET funding, besides being involved in coordinating a number of nursing units and participating in the evaluation of the nursing curriculum. I organised the Nursing Target Workshop for the Royal College Northern Territory Chapter and represented the Chapter at conferences and National meetings. I had to take turns in presenting monthly lunchtime seminars and co-ordinating and initiating the seminars in the School of Nursing, Northern Territory University. As a nursing academic I was required to participate in research activities. I did a survey on Chinese food beliefs and practices in relation to health and illness amongst the Chinese population in Darwin, which I extended to the New South Wales population. The research findings were written and published in the Nursing Journal. For my Masters Education Program, I studied the attrition rates of nursing students in Higher Education. I enjoyed my work at the university but not the politics.

Besides maintaining and enhancing my standing as an academic through professional academic development activities, including research, I had to provide professional services to the nursing profession; I had to provide services to the community. I was involved with the Haikou Sister City Committee in the exchange students and cultural exchange program. I represented the Northern Territory University as a delegate to Hainan Island trying to recruit nursing students. I was also in the Australian Chinese Friendship Society Northern Territory Branch for six years. As a committee member to the Royal College of Nursing, I had many experiences in the organisation on a planning committee for conferences and Summer school. I also was involved in fundraising activities for the Northern Territory Chapter. I remember standing at the markets and mall selling raffle tickets which I dreaded. Eventually when I was elected to be Treasurer of the Northern Territory Chapter, I reassessed the finances of the Chapter, reinvested the money we had, and got the money to work for us. I was lucky then as a Treasurer that the interest rates were high, at 14% which allowed me to invest and keep our finances floating without having the Chapter raising money through selling raffle tickets. To have so much on my plate, one could hardly have any time for social life but it was good to keep myself constructively busy. When the structure of the Professional Body changed, the Northern Territory Chapter was able to transfer over A$80,000 to the College of Nursing National Body, Canberra.

The nursing courses changed with the times too. During my earlier years at the School of Nursing, an Associate Diploma of Nursing was converted to a Degree course. Eventually there were thoughts of upgrading the degree course to a post-graduate course such as Nursing Management, Multicultural Nursing, Midwifery etc. Understandably, there were many meetings to attend and discussions with various professional personnel to make the changes and rewrite the courses. The clinical nurses from the community, hospital, consumers and other lecturers who were involved in teaching the nursing course were invited to attend the various meetings with their input to the curriculum. The nursing units were taught by academic nurses, whereas the Behavioural and Biological Sciences areas were to be taught by the respective disciplines. This system would encourage the nursing students to mix with students in other disciplines and thus promote a wider aspect of thinking and ideas. It sounded good in theory to inhibit narrow-mindedness of nurses, but did it work? I did not think nurse researchers would come out with the intended outcome if a research study was to be conducted. However, as the country's economy came to a recession, the government decided to give less funding to universities and staff sizes would have to be reduced. University departments were required to generate some income themselves to retain their staff and run the type of courses they wished. Meetings were held as to how the School of Nursing could survive. We were asked to generate more courses and have more hours of teaching, research, and to seek funding from outside sources like the Health Department. We also needed to revise our courses so that we need not have to pay other disciplines to teach our nursing students. Eventually we had to teach nurses Psychology and Sociology ourselves. It was believed that with nurse academics teaching the Social Science areas themselves, the nursing school could save money and the nurse academics could assist the students to apply the theory into their nursing practice better than the Social Sciences lecturers who had no nursing background. The Nursing Department had good initial intentions, trying to integrate the nursing students with other faculty students.

Basic Nursing students during the beginning years were few in number. We had only about ten enrolments which reduced to only four by the end of the final year. As time passed, the number of nursing students increased to about forty. We required a lot of students to enrol to create funding for the school. The Nursing School appeared to be recruiting students with lower high school scores than other university disciplines. When mature aged students were attracted to the course, the number of students began to increase. Some of the students used the relatively easy entry to the nursing course as an entry to the university. After the first year into the course, they transferred from nursing to another course they really desired, such as Social Welfare, and had the credits transferred to that course.

As could be expected, when the number of students increased, there were more problematic students. Some personnel were related to the course or the clinical placements at the hospital and members of staff. There were students who blamed the school when they failed, not themselves. There were students who appealed for better grades and demanded services from the lecturers. Some even brought their personal problems to the school. I had students who brought their children to classes as they could not afford baby sitters or child care. Many of the nursing students were single mothers. I admired the students who really tried hard to earn a decent living and make something of their life. There were many dedicated nursing students who had taken up nursing for the right reasons but there were a number who were not and they were the ones who seemed to create trouble. There were many appeals when they did not like the grades given to them. In the clinical component of the course, some students were not interested in working and getting no pay, but socialised and used their mouths to work instead of their hands and mind. They were students who requested a justification from staff on every grade given to them. I had a student who went as far as to accuse me of being discriminatory because of her pregnancy after failing her in the clinical part of nursing.

That case became very political when I stood by my criteria and principles in passing or failing my nursing unit. The student further appealed to the Dean. I was told the students were consumers, so we had to satisfy them and they were often in the right. They paid the fees to the university. I explained my position and insisted that the student did not meet the grade. A senior lecturer than stepped in and persuaded me to reassess her. I felt I could not do it. The senior lecturer thought she would gain some popularity points with students and went ahead and reassessed and passed the student. I felt this was unethical of the lecturer. She even remarked my students' papers when they were asked for a remark and she changed the grades when she did not teach the unit. What could I do when a senior member of your staff acted this way? I did not fight back as I felt the school and staff should be seen as one and not in conflict with one another. I respected our professional ethics and went to the Dean but it was useless as the Heads "slapped her wrists" and nothing else seemed to happen to the senior lecturer. These were some of the problems I faced during the later years of my teaching when student numbers increased.

There were many different types of students as well as different types of lecturers. I do not blame the public for commenting that the university graduates were less competent in their clinical areas than hospital trained nurses. Even the ward staff had complained that graduate nurses were very poor in their clinical practice. The graduates had the theory but not practice. I believed that nursing lecturers should play the part in making sure that the students had their required clinical hours and were competent in their nursing practice. They should not be passed if they were poor in their practice. They should be called to spend hours in the nursing laboratory until they were safe to practise in the wards. Nurses had lives in their hands and patients depended on us for safe nursing practice.

As the School of Nursing grew, we had to expand the number of staff. My first boss left to pursue greener pastures. The second-in-charge was then left without the usual person to create conflicts and to drive her adrenaline high. She seemed to survive on creating problems and conflicts among the staff and students, and was always critical of everybody except herself, and instigating staff to be against one another. I dreaded confronting her. I found her discriminative too and when she had an eye against someone, she would not let go until she saw the person defeated. I saw a staff member being destroyed by her. I found her destructive and vicious at times. If she could do the job of digging the grave and burying the one she disliked, she would gladly do so. When she was in a mood in destroying a member of staff, she could be unethical. I did not know how she could be allowed to be such a character without the authorities doing something to control her behaviour. Could it be the union that was behind her? I always wondered. I joined the union to avoid trouble with her. I felt strongly that the academic union was a blackmailer and I had to pay for my protection with such 'academic thugs'. One had to tread carefully in one's job in Darwin. Sometimes I wondered how I could survive ten years as a nurse academic. I had not experienced such a high level of viciousness before. I supposed at this job as an academic, I had more years at it and was very involved with people. Eventually, the political stress was just too much for me when this troublesome member of staff was favoured by the authorities over the Professor to become the Nursing School Head. I often wondered how such vicious libel could be allowed in any workplace.

At that time, restructuring at the university was very active. We were offered early retirement. Three of the Nursing School staff members took the offer. I chewed over the idea and had a talk with my family. My eldest brother advised me to take early retirement; if I could manage financially it was not worth facing the stresses and problems of work as I was not young anymore. I was 53 years old and had just been diagnosed as having high blood pressure and had to take Norvasc to maintain a near to normal blood pressure. I took his advice and applied for early retirement during the semester break and was successful.

I came back from a holiday in Sydney after I had the news that I was successful with my application. I packed my personal effects and soon enough I moved to Sydney for my retirement. I worked as an agency nurse when I had big bills to pay, otherwise, I just took it easy and did things which I enjoyed which I did not have time for before. The rental from my Brinkin and Coogee units came in handy. I enjoyed one year's stay in the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont. I did a lot of walking around the city to places of interest to me. I did not have to work much but only took the shifts whenever I needed more cash to pay a bill. Life was what I wanted then and was enjoying them.

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