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Turrbal and Jagera Country
Level 4, 348 Edward Street
Brisbane QLD 4000
In 2017 Laura Rutherford started her GROW Rural journey as a first-year physiotherapy student at our inaugural Central Queensland event. Today she's employed as a new graduate with Proactive Physio in Cairns and last year facilitated her own clinical skills session for our GROW Rural North Queensland cohort.
We caught up with Laura to hear a bit more about her journey and about how GROW Rural inspired her. Laura shared with us, “I was in the first ever GROW Rural cohort in 2017, a nervous physiotherapy student who had never done a big program like that. I was so excited that I got the opportunity to travel around Central Queensland. I still know people in that cohort, I still talk to them. It was such an amazing experience.
Later I transferred universities, and happened to be at Theodore, staying with a friend who was on a medical placement, when I ran into the GROW 2022 cohort at the rodeo. We caught up and they invited me to join their skills sessions the next day. So, I got to do another day of GROW, which I was so excited about. I thought, wow, how good to add an extra part to my GROW journey.
I did an interview with Meredith (Future Workforce Team Leader who coordinates the GROW Rural Program) the following year, and she mentioned that there were now three GROW cohorts. We talked about my graduation, that I got a job in Cairns, which led to me being invited to come up to the Tablelands to run my own workshop as part of the GROW Rural North Queensland 2024 program, which was so cool. I remember when I was a student in 2017, and my feedback was that it could have a little bit more allied health involvement. So, it was funny to now be the allied health involvement, and it feels like such a full circle moment.”
And so, Laura facilitated her very first physiotherapy skills session at the North Queensland event and afterwards said, “It was so much fun. I was so nervous because I am a new graduate. These students are only a few years behind me, and I was making shoulder injuries fun and interactive, which are not fun and interactive. But the students had a really good time. They were playing around with different exercises, asking some really good questions and we discussed how to apply what I do as a physio to other allied health disciplines, including prioritising the patient, looking after everyone's needs and looking after the community while we are treating individual patients. It was just such an amazing opportunity for me.”
Laura said the impact that the GROW Rual program had on her studies and career journey was everything. “I had a quite wavy trip through university. I grew up in a small town and sort of assumed that my small town doesn't have healthcare so I would have to go to a bigger town to work. GROW really showed me all the different options that are available. There are health care professionals that have been working in the same town they grew up in, some who have moved to new towns and are running their own businesses, doing three days a week, balancing their work and life and doing really well in their careers, and also outreach opportunities. It gave me the reassurance that the idea I had in my head, I can actually do that and I'm now on a path to making that happen. Getting a good job in a regional area, getting a lot of experience, finding good mentors, which was an important lesson I got from GROW. And now I've got this amazing network, and people I can lean on to go back into those rural areas further down in my career, which I'm really excited about.”
Applications are now open for a new cohort of first-year university health students to apply for GROW Rural North Queensland. Visit our website via the button below for more information about the program, dates and also the link to submit your application.
