Spending a month on her feet in one of the busiest hospitals in Australia has Orange midwife Nicole Vautin eager to share her newfound knowledge with colleagues.
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The inaugural recipient of a Torie Finnane Foundation exchange placement, Ms Vautin recently spent four weeks in the Newborn Care Centre at the Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick.
The foundation is named in honour of beloved Orange midwife Torie Finnane, who died from bacterial meningitis in December 2020, and seeks to improve regional maternity services.
Ms Vautin said the chance to care for babies born prematurely and with critical illnesses was invaluable.
"It was amazing, incredible," she told the Central Western Daily.
"I'm certainly very grateful for the valuable experience and the tireless supporters of the Torie Finnane Foundation.
"Also the amazing staff at the hospital sharing their time, knowledge and expertise with me.
"It was just so valuable."
Learning how to transition babies from critical care in metropolitan settings to regional ones was a key feature of Ms Vautin's time away.
She said she was keen to implement what she had learned, both in terms of treatment and communication, back in Orange.
"This program has so much value," she explained.
"It also gave me an insight into the emotional rollercoaster that so many parents face.
"When these babies are transferred back to their parents I was able to have much more of an appreciation of what they have been through and I think that can help us bridge the transition from tertiary care back to a regional care setting.
"While you can't compare the two environments there are certainly skills that can be translated."
Having previously credited Ms Finnane for helping her become the midwife she is today, Ms Vautin said her experience was very fitting of the woman herself and urged other midwives to jump at the opportunity to learn.
"There is always so much more to learn which highlights the primary goal of the Torie Finnane Foundation," she explained.
"There's that commitment to professional development and education. Torie was very passionate about education.
"It's certainly heightened my interest in neonatology. I was so fortunate to have that experience working in such a fast-paced, dynamic environment where I was able to care for those babies that had conditions you only sporadically or never see in Orange."
