Catherine Breen Kamkong

Good afternoon everybody. I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land upon which the UTS campus stands, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and my respects also to Deputy Chancellor, Provost, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice President, the University Secretary, the Associate Dean of the Faculty, the Chair of the Academic Board, to staff, family, friends and to graduates. 

What an honour it is for me to be with all of you here today to celebrate what is the end of your foundational education as nurses, but it’s the beginning of the career that lies ahead of you. When I was preparing my remarks today, I thought that it might be helpful if I shared a little bit with you about the lessons that I have learned on my journey since graduating with my Bachelor of Applied Science Nursing, back in 1993 or 94 – I’ve forgotten the exact year – not because I feel that what I’ve done is anything outstanding or significant, but more because I want each of you to believe that the world is at your feet and that there are infinite possibilities that lie ahead for each of you, and huge contributions that each of you have the potential to make, but also that you need to make.

Mother Theresa once said that not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. For me, nursing has been much, much more than a job. It’s offered the opportunity to be a vocation, and one where you support people at critical moments in their lives. What each of us might consider small can make a very big difference to a person’s experience of pain, of fear, of loss and of life itself. I remember once at St Vincent’s Hospital here in Sydney when I was working in the oncology ward. I remember that there was a woman from the Solomon Islands and she’d been brought to St Vincent’s with uterine cancer that has metastasized, and her prognosis was very poor. She was away from family in a new environment and a culture. And I remember this night I was doing the rounds in the wards, and I was startled because I found her on the floor. And I assumed that she’d fallen out of bed and that I hadn’t pulled the rails of the side of the bed up, but she was crying on the floor and she told me that she wanted to feel the healing warmth of the sun from the earth. There was no sun heating up the 10th floor of St Vincent’s Hospital in the oncology ward. So, I sat with her on the floor and I remember crying because I also felt the pain that she was in, and I also felt her loneliness, the fact that her prognosis was poor, and the lack of what she needed to bring her comfort, which was just the sun heating up the earth and the ground. 

But that moment has stayed with me ever since, as I learned many, many things from that. I learned that there are often moments when we want to help and make everything better, but the best that we can do is just to be there with that person, and show them that you care. No clinical procedure at that moment could have helped. That moment also taught me how important it is to be respectful in our care of others, and also the importance of understanding difference. During my experience working in public hospitals here in Sydney, or in a Tibetan refugee camp working with refugees from Myanmar, with street children in Vietnam, with young, adolescent mothers in Nepal or rural women in Cambodia, the lesson for me has been the same: try to do small things with great love. 

The second lesson that I’ve learned and I wanted to share with you is of the importance of gratitude, and finding a way to express that gratitude. Sometimes, one has to experience something else to really know and understand the privilege one has. In around the year 2000, when I was working a Burmese refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border, I was training community health workers, and I was really struck by the desperate situation faced by the people there, and why it is that some in life have to suffer so much. And I still remember the health workers saying to me that it was the lottery of birth, and that though we were all given the same chance in life in that very moment of when we’re born, a lot depends on where we’re born, when we’re born and to whom we’re born. The race of life starts at the same place, but all of those things have a very strong influence on the path after that. I was very lucky in the lottery of birth. 

I was born as an Australian in a good family and had many opportunities, including the chance of a wonderful education. The foundational base that studying nursing here at UTS gave me has really created so many opportunities for me, and it’s that opportunity that also motivated me so much to give back whatever I can, and to contribute to making the lives of those not so fortunate a little more dignified and for their right to health to be somewhat realised. And this leads me to the final lesson that I just wanted to share with you, and that is the importance of finding your purpose. I had a very good job at critical care at St Vincent’s, back in the mid-90s, and the prospects of saving enough to put a deposit on a small place in Balmain. That’s what I was hoping to do. But I remember feeling that there was just something more – something more that was calling me. So, I handed in my resignation and with those savings, I bought a ticket to Ho Chi Minh, to Vietnam, and then I went volunteering as a nurse to a clinic in an orphanage where babies and small children were being brought in after being found abandoned on the streets, and they were also found dumped in garbage bins. I used to go home to my small hotel in Ho Chi Minh and cry and feel helpless and homesick and really upset at the plight of the children, and I also felt really hurt at the way the babies were being treated by other health professionals. But it sparked something deep within me – that I wanted to be able to do more. And this searching took me further – it took me to India, where I continued to volunteer, and there I had to draw on everything I learned at UTS, and in life. Just from being from Australia, and from being trained as a nurse, led me to be called upon to assist in all sorts of situations that I felt very unprepared for. 
To help women giving birth in a small hut in fields in the mountains in [inaudible] Pradesh in India, to looking after Tibetan refugee children who came to me with totally burned hands from lighting a fire to cook for their family in their small house, to resuscitating a newborn of a refugee woman in a health centre at night with no light and no other equipment than my mouth and my two hands. I became passionate about refugee health and about global health, and I’ve continued on this journey of trying to harness all my brain power, all my capacity, just to try to make a small difference. I studied further, I worked even more in humanitarian settings, after cyclones in Myanmar and also ethnic conflicts. I worked in post-conflict in Nepal, and then I came to Cambodia, where I am now. I became passionate about trying to make sure that no woman dies in pregnancy and childbirth, and that every baby that is born has a chance of more than survival. And that’s why my work has taken me to the United Nations. So, none of this is important in itself, but what I’m trying to impart on you is that I found my purpose, and I encourage you to find yours also. 

I love the words of Eddie Woo, that amazing mathematics teacher from Cherrybrook High School who gave an address for Australia Day. He explained, ‘If you’re a young person trying to find your way in the world, I don’t think you need to follow your passion. I think you have to become passionate about following need.’ So, if you allow me, I would like to ask each one of you to think about these words and the lessons that I shared. Do small things with great love. Look outwards at the world around and find what matters to each one of you. Consider all that you have, and try and give back to others some of what you’ve learned and taken away from your studies here at UTS. Make a contribution in whatever way you can to some of the needs of our people here in Australia or in our shared world. Put your heart, your souls and all your skills and capacity into that and you will found your purpose. So I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours, and congratulations again for your achievement today.