Sanjeevani Children's Hospital - Fiji

Helen is a Registered Nurse with almost 40 years of experience in Healthcare.

Her expertise spans several clinical areas but with a focus on clinical supervision, staff development and assessments and the tutoring of nursing students.

Helen is the author of three books: Journey of our Spirit; Abundance of

Joy and Compassion, the Heart of Nursing.

In parallel with her nursing career, Helen is also a complementary therapist – utilising her skills to help people achieve optimal health and wellbeing.

Over a significant part of her nursing career, Helen has volunteered in providing community support such as:

• For a few years, writing monthly articles for the Western Suburbs newspaper on health and wellbeing.

• Providing complementary therapy services at Solariscare, for 16 years, to help and support people dealing with cancer and chronic pain.

• In 2017, becoming a board member of the Australian, NGO, Health in Kind, which provides free medical support and services to underprivileged people in Australia and internationally.

• Travelling to India, during 2018 and 2019, to share her wealth of experience and knowledge with fellow health care professionals as a Compassion trainer at two Sanjeevani, paediatric, cardiac Hospitals to foster a culture of empathy and understanding at every level in the Hospitals.

For the past one and a half years, Helen has lived in Fiji where she has volunteered her time as the Nurse Manager at the, Sanjeevani Children's Hospital, Fiji, which was opened in April 2022.

In this role, she played a major and pivotal part in setting up the hospital which specialises in providing free-of-charge heart surgery to children born with congenital heart disease – ‘CHD.’

As well as managing the hospital, running education sessions on values and compassion and being involved in heart screening during outreach camps, Helen organised and co-ordinated international nursing staff to assist the visiting surgical teams so ensuring the success of the cardiac surgeries. To date, 189 children have received free-of-charge heart surgery at a 100% success rate.

Today, Helen will be talking about her experiences at the Sanjeevani Children's Hospital in Fiji and the importance of nurse education and training for Fiji nurses.