Our patient experience champions: Meet Arnica Gregory

Patient Experience Week is an opportunity to celebrate healthcare staff who have an impact on the patient experience, every day.

This year, we are taking a minute to acknowledge those who are going above and beyond in our vision of healthy kids, healthy communities!

Meet Arnica Gregory

Child Health Nurse, Community Health

"I attended Arnica's mother's group in Atwell as my local mothers' group didn't provide educational information. Arnica's session was well structured and informative with practical techniques which worked trying to get my newborn to sleep. The group was for Chinese speaking mums. Although I don't have any problems with English after living in Australia since I was a teen, I can see the benefits to the Chinese speaking community. Arnica is knowledgeable and willing to help in anyway."

- Compliment from mothers' group member 

How long have you worked for CAHS?

I have worked at CAHS for seven years.

What do you love most about your job?

There are so many aspects that I love about my job!

I have the privilege everyday to assist children and their families in a safe environment, sometimes at home, which allows me to form trust and relationships with my clients. I love being able to build a true picture of the family and ultimately enable me to offer practical support. Empowering parents with young children with what they have achieved and what they can do better is such a rewarding part of my job. I love being able to assist children with health issues and developmental concerns to find relevant and safe intervention channels.

I enjoy my work when parents have success with my advice and bring up healthy and well-developed children. Their happy faces brighten my day!
I love to see the families I have helped, who have overcome difficult times with family stress, social isolation and needing support with parenting skills and knowledge.

Facilitating the Chinese Early Parenting group is one of my biggest thrills. It brings much such joy to help the socially disadvantaged groups in our communities to understand evidence based health information. To see how they change their parenting style from unsafe and out of date old culture driven parenting styles to evidence based and baby lead safe practise is a personal achievement.

What is one thing you do that to ensure our children and families receive the best experience?

I always follow up with my clients if any concerns were raised from previous appointments either by phone calls or face-to-face until the issue is resolved. By doing so, the parents feel supported and empowered to be the best parents they can be. 

Nowadays, parenting information is easily available which can make parenting overwhelming. I always keep my knowledge updated with online learning and reading evidence-based research papers during work and after work. I read published books to broaden my knowledge about nutrition, breast feeding, general development and women's health during my time off work.

I can identify what is relevant and offer advice accordingly which eases parent anxiety and avoid misleading information. I have found that the parents who attend my Chinese early Parenting groups are very appreciative of this approach.

What's next for you?

I would really love to engage more closely with prenatal mums, supporting them through the early stages of motherhood with postnatal care, breastfeeding and relationships.