Care isn’t one‑size‑fits‑all, neither is nursing
True Relationships and Reproductive Health proudly acknowledges the 2026 International Nurses Day theme, Our Nurses. Our Future. Empowered Nurses Save Lives, announced by the International Council of Nurses. Across Queensland, True nurses play a vital role in delivering specialised sexual and reproductive health services that support the wellbeing, dignity, and health outcomes of individuals and communities.
This year’s theme reinforces the importance of empowering nurses through supportive workplaces, enabling nurses to practice to their full scope, contribute their expertise, and lead with influence and compassion.
This International Nurses Day (12 May), we reflect on the impact and diversity of nursing and the many paths it can take.
At True Relationships and Reproductive Health, nursing is not defined by a single role, title or destination. Instead, it is shaped by individual journeys that have led practitioners into very different places, all within the same organisation.
The careers of Susie Thompson, Helen Crabtree‑Spencer, Sheena Callaghan and Anna Deakin highlight just how varied a nursing pathway can be. Each has arrived at True by a different route, and together their experiences create a more responsive, integrated and impactful model of care for the people who use our services.
Different journeys, stronger care at True
Although their paths look different, all four women share a common starting point: nursing as the foundation of their professional lives. From that shared starting point, their paths have diverged in direction, setting and scope.
Susie Thompson began her career in high pressure emergency departments, spending more than 15 years caring for patients in acute hospital settings before completing nurse practitioner training. Today, she works at True in an advanced practice role, independently assessing patients, ordering investigations, making diagnoses and prescribing treatment within scope, while collaborating closely with doctors and other clinicians.
CAPTION: Susie Thompson has traversed a career from nursing student to emergency nurse, and is now Nurse Practitioner at True's Windsor clinic.
CAPTION: Helen Crabtree-Spencer as a nursing student and with the last baby she delivered as a midwifery student.
CAPTION: Sheena Callaghan as a nursing student, just beginning her career, and in her role as an educator with True.
CAPTION: Anna Deakin is just starting on her nursing journey. Currently a nursing assistant with True, Anna is training to become a registered nurse.
How diversity strengthens care
What makes these journeys especially powerful is how they intersect in everyday practice.
At True, clients are supported by nurses whose collective experience spans emergency medicine, midwifery, education, leadership, outreach and early‑career practice.
- Susie’s emergency background sharpens clinical judgement and patient advocacy.
- Helen’s midwifery experience brings a life‑stage perspective that looks beyond single appointments.
- Sheena’s education and leadership expertise helps shape programs that respond to diverse community needs.
- Anna’s role reinforces a core belief: care begins the moment someone is welcomed, listened to and reassured.
Together, these perspectives strengthen service delivery. They influence how clinics operate, how education is delivered, how outreach is designed and how teams collaborate.
For clients, this means care that is informed by a wider view, rather than a single professional lens.
A shared thread of global experience
One striking commonality across these nursing stories is travel.
Each woman has worked, studied or lived in different parts of the world, using nursing as a passport to international experience.
Susie worked in the United Kingdom. Helen’s career included practice in the UK and the Middle East. Sheena trained and worked in Scotland before migrating to Australia. Even at the beginning of her career, Anna speaks of nursing as a profession that offers mobility and opportunity.
This global experience brings more than personal enrichment. It builds cultural awareness, adaptability and wider clinical perspectives — all essential in sexual and reproductive healthcare. These insights shape how teams at True respond to diversity, complexity and change, benefiting both colleagues and clients.
A message for future nurses
For anyone considering nursing as a career, these stories offer reassurance rather than process.
There is no single pathway, no fixed timeline and no requirement to know the end point from the start.
Nursing can lead to hospitals, clinics, classrooms, leadership roles, regional outreach or international work. It can accommodate pauses, changes in direction and shifts driven by family life, curiosity or circumstance.
Looking ahead
As True continues to evolve in response to our community's needs, nurses remain central to how care and education are delivered across Queensland.
This International Nurses Day is an opportunity to acknowledge not only the profession, but the many ways nursing experience contributes to our organisation and the communities we serve.
Many of True’s leaders, including CEO Donna Bonney, also began their careers in nursing, reinforcing the lasting influence of the profession across every level of the organisation.
