Third Time's a Charm

Have you ever wondered what really happens at nursing executive level in the Australian acute private health sector? Join Fiona for a look behind the curtain at what really occurs with the hiring and firing of executive nurse leaders, and learn from her mistakes with her top tips guide for any new nurse leader. Enjoy her humorous, and often unflinchingly honest account of her forty years nursing and leadership career, as well as her inspiring journey through an ovarian cancer diagnosis and her cha cha cha with this terrible disease.

Fiona sadly passed away on August 22^nd, 2024. This was her final cha cha cha.

Fiona is a retired Registered Nurse who enjoyed a forty-year nursing career spanning both the public sector and private sectors in Australia, with the majority in the acute private sector. With her background as one of the last hospital-trained Registered Nurses in Australia, her extensive years as an operating theatre nurse and Perioperative Services Manager, as well as her climb to Nursing Executive Leadership roles including Director of Clinical Services and Director of Nursing roles, her memoir Third Time’s a Charm details the challenges of traversing executive leadership in the Australian private healthcare sector.

She demonstrates that it can be a fantastic career, but like anything, can have its challenges and pitfalls – her tips are definitely worth noting for an easier climb up that career ladder.

Fiona is also an ovarian cancer survivor, one of the few diagnosed at stage 2 who is still here to tell the tale about her dance with the she-devil ovarian cancer. Her story details her diagnosis in 2015, her recurrence in 2020 and how she has been surviving as a chronic ovarian cancer sufferer ever since. She hopes to demonstrate with her story that just because you are diagnosed with cancer it does not mean it is the end of the world and that you can in fact continue to work, thrive and get on with living in spite of it.