With International Nurses Day on 12 May — celebrated worldwide on Florence Nightingale’s birthday — True Relationships and Reproductive Health (True) is recognising the depth and diversity of nursing across our organisation. You can read more about that here.
This year also marks a personal milestone for one of our team: Sheena Callaghan is celebrating 40 years in nursing.
It’s a career that hasn’t followed a straight line. Instead, it has evolved alongside life, family and curiosity, moving from hands‑on clinical care to statewide education leadership. Along the way, it has taken her across wards, classrooms and communities, and eventually across countries and continents.
Across four decades, one thing has remained constant. Sheena’s work has stayed grounded in real lives and real conversations.
“Nursing doesn’t have to follow one path,” Sheena says. “It can grow and change with you.”
A non‑linear beginning
Sheena didn’t grow up with a grand plan to spend four decades in nursing. An interest in human biology, paired with a desire to work with people, led her to apply straight from school. Once training began, the possibilities quickly expanded.
Early experience in general nursing laid strong foundations, but it was a short placement in obstetrics that proved pivotal. The pace, complexity and privilege of supporting people through major life moments stood out. Before long, Sheena knew she wanted to pursue midwifery.
That sense of possibility extended beyond hospital walls. Early in her career, Sheena took time out of midwifery to work overseas, spending a summer in the United States as a camp nurse. The role allowed her to combine nursing with travel across North America — an experience that broadened her perspective and reinforced just how portable a nursing qualification can be.
“Nursing can take you anywhere,” she says.
After working in a surgical ward at the Institute of Neurosurgical Sciences in Glasgow, she completed her midwifery training at the Queen Mother’s Maternity Hospital, then spent nearly a decade working as a labour ward midwife.
The work was demanding and highly skilled. Long hours, intense responsibility and deeply human interactions shaped not only her clinical expertise, but also her confidence, adaptability and communication skills.
Looking back, this stage of her career marked an early realisation: nursing didn’t have to be linear. It could shift and evolve alongside life.
CAPTION: Sheena Callaghan with some of her fellow nursing studetns at the very start of her career.
A change of pace, and a growing focus on education
Motherhood prompted a rethink. After having children, the unsociable hours of midwifery became harder to juggle, particularly with her husband also working late nights in his business. Sheena began looking for a role that better aligned with family life and found it in school nursing, where term‑time hours coincided with her daughter starting primary school.
As she stepped into the role, she also completed a postgraduate course in sexual and reproductive health in Scotland — a requirement for school nursing where she worked.
Together, that new role and study reshaped her career. The work shifted her focus towards prevention and health promotion, an area she found deeply rewarding.
“That’s when my interest in education really took hold,” says Sheena.
CAPTION: Sheena and her friend were at neighbouring camps as camp nurses in the US.
Starting again in Australia
When Sheena and her family decided to move overseas, Australia wasn’t the initial plan. France was briefly on the list, complete with French lessons, before Australia won out as the more practical option. Same language. Same side of the road.
They moved in 2010, but the transition wasn’t immediate. Despite arriving on a permanent visa connected to nursing, the registration process took nearly a year. Paperwork was lost, applications stalled, and while waiting, Sheena worked with her husband in a café business in Brisbane city.
Once registration finally came through, the question was simple: what next?
From her earlier work, she knew she loved sexual and reproductive health education. The final piece fell into place when True delivered a program in her daughter’s classroom.
Hearing about the session, she had a moment of clarity.
This is who does that here.
She contacted True’s Gold Coast team, and as luck would have it, they had a vacancy. Before she knew it, Sheena had become an educator. Over time, her role grew into regional coordination, and the pathway began to take shape.
Nursing through education
This May marks 15 years with True, and a career increasingly shaped by education.
Today, Sheena is an education manager, leading a team that delivers sexual and reproductive health education programs across Queensland.
After many years based on the Gold Coast, she moved into program development following a 2022 organisational restructure. Her current role sees her leading sexual and reproductive health educators across six offices statewide.
At the heart of the work is a simple principle: education for all. In practice, that means working with people of any age and ability to support healthy relationships, sexuality and reproductive health, and ensuring access to accurate information as a human right.
Programs are shaped around community need. Sessions may be delivered to students, parents and carers, community groups, or professionals who support young people. The goal is always the same: meet people where they are and take them on a learning journey.
CAPTION: Sheena is right at home in her role as a sexual and reproductive health educator at True.
Conversations that start early
In primary schools, education often focuses on protective behaviours, starting with age‑appropriate foundations. That includes using correct names for body parts, reinforcing that it’s safe to talk about bodies, and identifying trusted adults to ask for help.
Consent education begins early, too. Concepts such as body ownership and respectful relationships are introduced in prep and developed as children grow older. Later conversations expand to include puberty, relationships and navigating consent.
The intention is straightforward. When young people have trustworthy information and adults they can talk to, it becomes easier to seek help and make informed decisions later.
This work extends into the disability sector, as well as training for adults who support children and adolescents in many settings, not just schools.
Beyond schools and into aged care
Aged care is another area Sheena is keen to grow. It’s work she describes as “fantastic”, whether supporting older adults directly or training the professionals and families who care for them.
These are not one‑issue conversations. Education can include supporting diverse older adults, taking a trauma‑aware approach, and navigating complex topics such as dignity, dementia and consent.
“It’s about recognising that these conversations matter at every stage of life,” says Sheena.
CAPTION: Sheena is now Manager Educator at True, helping to shape sexual and reproductive health education programs and resources.
The impact of small moments
When reflecting on highlights across 40 years, Sheena doesn’t point to awards or formal milestones. Instead, it’s the small conversations that stay with her.
In education, she often reminds her team that they plant seeds. You don’t always see where those seeds land, or how they grow—and sometimes the impact only becomes clear years later.
One early memory from school education still stands out. During a consent session, a small group of students realised, for the first time, that they had a choice. That it was their body, and they could say no.
It captured why the work matters. The right information, at the right time, can give someone language and options they didn’t know they had.
A career with many paths
Sheena’s story is also a reflection of True’s workforce.
Educators bring degree‑level qualifications from nursing, midwifery, teaching, psychology and social work. That mix of experience means programs are designed through multiple professional lenses.
For nursing, it’s a natural fit. Clinical knowledge and communication skills come together in ways that are practical, grounded and deeply human.
For young people considering nursing, Sheena’s advice is simple: don’t close any doors.
Later this year, she will return to Scotland to mark her 40‑year anniversary with part of her original nursing class. It’s a reminder of just how many directions a nursing qualification can take. Among her graduating class are nurses working on hospital wards, academics, and one who went on to become an infection control nurse consultant for the World Health Organization. The range is wide and varied.
After four decades, Sheena’s career spans acute hospital care, midwifery, school nursing, international relocation and statewide education leadership at True.
Nursing isn’t one job title, it’s a foundation for work that impact people well beyond the ward.
