Olivia Cook
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Olivia is a registered nurse and academic and is currently the Education Senior Manager for the McGrath Foundation. She graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Nursing and after 15 years of nursing and management in the fields of women’s health and oncology, Olivia returned to complete her honours degree and PhD and was the first postdoctoral research fellow appointed to Monash Nursing and Midwifery.
Read her inspiring address to our 2022 Graduates, delivered at the Graduation Ceremony on Tuesday 22nd March 2022.
"It is an honour to address you on this very special day in your lives. I too would like to acknowledge and pay my personal respects to the People of the Kulin Nations as the traditional owners and custodians of this land on which we gather today. I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with us in the audience.
I am taken back to the first time that I graduated in this grand room… it was both a happy and a sad day for me as I was joined by my Mum who was also Monash Nursing graduate, but couldn’t be joined by my Dad as he was very unwell and receiving treatment for a rare haematological cancer at the time. At that stage he was around 6 years into what was an 18-year cancer experience for him before he passed away.
As I entered the nursing workforce and learned more about cancer care and started to work in women’s health and oncology myself, I realised that cancer care was very inequitable. In particular, access to specialist cancer nurses, was pretty much reserved for those with breast cancer. I became aware of the vast difference in the level of care received by people with breast cancer who had access to a specialist nurse, compared with people like my Dad who did not. As I progressed in my career and became a nurse unit manager of a gynaecology/gynae-oncology ward I had to fight SO hard to have a specialist gynae-oncology nurse in my team. There was NO evidence to support this type of nursing role for people with cancers other than breast cancer. This of course set me on the pathway to my PhD and to my career-long mission to ensure that every person diagnosed with cancer has access to a specialist cancer nurse.
You may, at this point, be wondering to yourself ‘how it is that she came to work for the McGrath Foundation, who are all about breast cancer, if it is equity in other cancers that she is interested in?!’ Well Jane and Glenn McGrath and their mate Tracy Bevan set out on a mission 16 years ago to make sure that every person in Australia diagnosed with breast cancer has access to a breast care nurse. This first mission of the Foundation will be achieved in 2025. The Foundation is now working with other cancer charities and the Australian Government to actively shape the future of cancer care for all people with all cancers and I am very fortunate to be a part of this important body of work, I get to sit at the table and influence the decision makers. So it is with the McGrath Foundation - learning from the best and forging new directions - that I believe I will achieve my career goal.
So this address to you, on your graduation day, is a call to action. As you embark on your career or the next stage of your career - identify your spark, find your reason, follow your passion... What outcomes do you want to see changed? What inequity do you want to see remedied? What disease makes you want to get out of bed every day and fight for a cure or care for the people it affects?
In this call to action, I want to share with you the Values of the McGrath Foundation. I think that these values are the perfect guide for all health care professionals in their daily work but especially for those of you who have a passion and want to make a difference in your careers.
The first value is Care, Always - care for your community, your patients, each other and very importantly yourselves.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the incredibly difficult two years that we have all had during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of you as students have worked on the front line throughout the pandemic and you’ve learnt first-hand in order to provide excellent care, you must first care for yourself. And this is advice that you must take through your entire career. Please care for yourself so that you may care for others.
The second value is Courageous Invention. Never stop learning, questioning and improving.
I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be teaching nurses via a telepresence robot. But that is exactly what we are doing now at Monash Health – through a joint collaboration between the McGrath Foundation, Monash University and Monash Health – we beam in registered nurses, located all across this vast country, via robots and they follow us around the hospital and into consultations with patients and we teach them how to provide complex care to people with metastatic breast cancer. This enables us to overcome the geographical and financial barriers to providing education and of course has meant that we have continued to educate nurses throughout the pandemic.
So think BIG, and be courageous… challenge yourselves and think about how we can do things differently to improve the way that we provide healthcare.
The third value is Share You. At McGrath Foundation we believe that Diversity is our superpower. We are asked to be ourselves, share openly, challenge respectfully and leave united.
This is where I ask you all to put your big person undies on, be vulnerable, and bring yourself and your expertise to the table. That might be speaking up at a multidisciplinary team meeting to advocate for a patient in difficult social circumstances. It might be working towards making your health service culturally competent so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples feel safe and welcome to attend because this is something you are really passionate about. Or maybe you will draw on your Culturally and Linguistically Diverse background to provide better healthcare for refugees.
Whatever your background or your passion, bring your authentic and unique self to your role and everyone will benefit.
The fourth and final value is Get Back Up. Acknowledge the challenges, seek support and embrace hope. Never before in our lifetime have we been required to live in this persistent state of resilience. We have demonstrated to ourselves how enduring we can be, but also how we can’t do this alone. Don’t be afraid to share if you’re having a tough time and reach out to others and let them know what support looks like for you. This healthcare business is a tough gig – there will be days when you think ‘you couldn’t pay me a million bucks to do that day again’ but if we take the time to care for ourselves and reach out to others for support, we will get back up again, because we know that what we do makes a big difference to the lives of others.
I think that the key themes that thread through each of those four values are vulnerability and courage. Being vulnerable enough to be bring your true self to everything you do, the courage to contribute new ideas that may or may not work and the courage to get back up again if they don’t.
I wish each of you well in your future endeavours. I am SO proud to be a nurse and I hope that you can generate and maintain that sense of pride in your work throughout your careers too. Good luck".