Jane Krautz has worked across 70 hospitals and health services throughout Australia, spanning rural, remote and aeromedical settings. In this reflection, she explores what has stayed with her most – not the complexity of the work, but the humanity of rural and remote Australia and the deep sense of connection found within its communities.
Over the past decade, nursing has taken me through 70 different hospitals and health services across Australia, through each state and territory.
I have worked as a remote area nurse, midwife, and international aeromedical retrieval nurse in places many people will never see – small rural towns, remote communities, and overstretched hospitals where healthcare workers quietly carry enormous responsibility.
And after all those places, one thing has stayed with me: rural and remote Australia is the soul of this country.
In rural and remote healthcare, you are never just treating patients. You are caring for neighbours, families, farmers, children, and entire communities.
You celebrate births, respond to trauma, sit beside grief, and hold someone’s hand as they leave this world.
You become part of people’s lives.
Some of the most extraordinary clinicians I have ever met work in small rural hospitals with limited resources and little recognition.
Rural and remote nurses adapt, improvise, and keep going – not because it is easy, but because their communities need them.
It was watching communities rally around one another during floods, droughts, loss, and crisis. It was seeing kindness from people who had very little left to give themselves.
It was realising that strength in rural and remote Australia is often quiet.
After working in 70 different hospitals, across many different contexts, I have learned that rural and remote Australia gives you far more than experience.
It gives you perspective. It reminds you that healthcare is not only about medicine – it is about people. Connection. Community. Showing up for one another when things are hard.
And once rural and remote Australia becomes part of you, it never really leaves.
