Trina Scott

I’m a registered nurse and a Bundjalung woman from Northern New South Wales. I work for the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health, and we’re an Aboriginal community-controlled health organisation on the north side of Brisbane.

Nursing was second career for me; I worked in university administration and then I had twins at 36. When they started sleeping through the night, my brain started switching back on and I was thinking about what to do next. I took one of those little online surveys that’s supposed to tell you what sort of career you’re suited to, and nursing and psychology came up. As soon as I saw it, I thought oh, of course, this is me.

I want to help close that gap in Indigenous health outcomes and the Institute is doing an amazing job at it. Being a nurse here is my contribution. What I love most about the work is the opportunity to get to know the community. As a clinic nurse, I’m getting to make that difference for not just the one person that I’m in consultation with but their entire family.

When I enrolled in the graduate certificate, I was at a point in my career where I was thinking, what next? In the clinic, I’m seeing diabetes diagnosis earlier and earlier – for a range of complex reasons, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are at quite high risk of developing the disease. And then seeing teenagers being diagnosed with type 2, that was a little lightbulb moment for me. I thought, okay, I’ve been thinking about what to do next... this is it. I wanted to gain that deeper knowledge and understanding of diabetes as a chronic health condition.

I got the Infomedix ADEA scholarship from UTS, which was a pretty good reason to study there! We have a diabetes educator that comes to our clinic once a fortnight and she was the first person I went to talk to when I was first thinking about studying a diabetes course. She sent me the information about the scholarship and I was lucky enough to get it.

The most rewarding aspect of the course is just building that deeper knowledge and understanding of diabetes as a chronic health condition. When you study nursing you do little bits of lots of different things, so being able to specialise in one area, and an area that I’m consistently seeing as an issue, that was that number one thing.

In terms of my future career, I’d ideally like to be here where I am now, working as a diabetes educator. I already have those therapeutic relationships established with our families in the community, so they know and trust me already. Being able to keep going on that journey with them is what I really want to do.

The Graduate Certificate in Diabetes Education and Management is a great course that’s really been created to respond to the needs of working health professionals. It’s part time, you can work at your own pace, and the lecturers have all been nothing but supportive. It’s been a great experience so far. I’d highly recommend it!

Learn more about becoming a Diabetes Educator at UTS.