Use Any of Your Life Skills, Nurse Michelle

Disaster Relief Australia | May 2022

I’m a registered nurse and I’ve been a part of DRA for about four years now. I initially joined DRA because I thought I might be able to use my nursing skills and help other people in the community. But now I’ve realized, that you don’t have to be a nurse, you can use any of your life skills and hard work and get in there – it does really make a difference for the people in the community.

It means a lot to me to be able to help people as a nurse, I help people in my day to day life. What I really enjoy about that is knowing that if someone comes in when they’re quite unwell, we can make them better generally, and then they go home. To be able to continue that story for a wider community, if we can come in and help a community, get it back on its feet, in whatever way we can, then it’s really satisfying.

It’s knowing you’re making an impact, on people as individuals in my day to day life, and then also people as individuals in their home lives and also hopefully the community as a whole has impacted my life in a few ways.

I’ve gotten a lot of personal satisfaction out of coming in and seeing our efforts actually come to fruition and seeing families and, and communities actually sort of start to take that step to get on the road to recovery.

My daughter has also joined DRA and I love the confidence and skills that she’s learning. Being here with her now and actually seeing the amazing woman that she is, it’s incredible to see, you can’t count them. It’s for both from a personal point of view and for the communities point of view and the individuals within the community as well.

Everybody will be able to make a contribution in some way. They will bring their own life experiences and be able to make a purposeful impact on other people – and that’s such a wonderful thing to be able to do to people in our community who may not have that access to those resources in another way.