2025 Excellence in Education

Emma Fowler

Emma has been a nurse for 8 years, predominantly at Royal Perth Hospital, where she wants to make a difference to people’s lives and influence how nurses can contribute to the wider healthcare system. For the past 4 years she has undertaken the role of Staff Development Nurse within the plastic, ENT, and maxillofacial specialty ward where she is passionate to be at the bedside helping other nurses grow in their skills and profession. This is driven by the fact that Emma can remember how nervous she was as a junior nurse and recognises that extra time, support, and kindness can make all the difference. In her role, Emma implements and evaluates orientation, education, and training at the ward level, as well as facilitating and promoting patient safety and quality of care. She works collaboratively with the multidisciplinary team to ensure evidence-based service is delivered in accordance with hospital policy and standards. Emma creates a supportive environment tailoring education to staffs’ preferences. Recently, she adopted personalised strategies for a neurodiverse nurse that included playing music to enable the nurse to remain calm, ensuring their success to achieve the core competencies required for the specialty area. This nurse now sings the song that was playing during her assessment every time she is required to undertake the skill. Emma is an advocate and key representative for education. Her leadership in this discipline has resulted in a near 100% request rate from graduates to remain in the specialty area. Emma’s passion and enthusiasm goes beyond boundaries, and she has been pivotal in advocating and supporting the refresher nurse program resulting in these nurses continuing to work in the surgical specialty area.

Hayley Jukes

Hayley is the nurse educator for the management of aggression training at RPG being responsible for the development, facilitation, implementation and evaluation of education programs, resources, and strategies. She is highly enthusiastic and self-driven, motivated by improving patient outcomes and reducing risk to staff through the provision of safe equitable care to all. She is passionate that no health clinician should ever feel alone or afraid in their clinical areas, and that increasing safety requires a change in culture. In taking on this role, Hayley is proud to have been brave enough to leave the comfort of her previous role and trust her skills and ability to educate staff. Hayley draws on her leadership and collaboration skills to ensure aggression risks and subsequent education have a strong and sustainable focus throughout the organisation and that this is relatable and relevant to all clinicians. Embracing her work, she brings a professional maturity through recognising the significance of building culture, education, and clinical practice improvements into governance processes. Hayley has developed and implemented WebPas alerts for behaviours of concern, along with a physical restraint record form. This included the creation and delivery of complex learning packages supporting staff while ensuring compliance with legislation. Hayley has built trust and relationships with staff by taking a proactive approach to problem solving and using education to navigate complex problems. In doing so, she has established a network facilitating collaborative efforts to bring together diverse expertise to overcome long-standing issues. One example is the integration of security into the ED to strengthen safety culture and enhance partnerships between security staff and emergency clinicians. Feedback received from staff who have received education from Hayley is always positive with many reporting increased confidence when dealing with aggression and increased understanding of the practical application of the training. 

Noreen Elliott

Noreen is a Staff Development Nurse (SDN) and Clinical Nurse in the ICU at Royal Perth Hospital where she feels privileged to care for patients and families. Her expertise enables her to deliver complex care at crucial moments making a difference to a patient’s recovery and wellbeing. Noreen’s passion for nursing is reflected in her approach to teaching others. She balances the need for technical proficiency with compassion and attention to what matters the most to patients and their families. This ability to connect with others motivates and inspires other staff to strive for excellence, growing a highly skilled ICU workforce. Noreen invests time and energy into delivering high quality training programs to grow contemporary and agile nurse specialists. She leads by example and attends to the small details that influence patient outcomes, reflecting on her own performance to identify areas for improvement and encouraging others to do the same. Noreen is inclusive, non-judgemental, calm, and encouraging, taking time to understand stakeholders and create a psychologically safe environment that caters to individual learning needs. This approach has been pivotal to retaining staff and building workforce capability at all levels of practice through a culture of continuous improvement, all achieved while instilling kindness, integrity, and accountability. Noreen’s leadership, coaching and mentorship has helped build a cohesive education team that caters for the unit’s educational demands, celebrates individual and team achievements, and encourages the critical inquiry that sustains lifelong learning. By redesigning training modules and requiring staff to engage with key concepts prior to attending workshops, Noreen has enabled face-to-face learning opportunities focusing on activities that contextualise knowledge. Through her passion, strong leadership and dogged persistence, Noreen has shifted staff attitudes from opposing changes to willingness to actively engage and enjoy supporting the development of others. Last year, Noreen was proud and humbled to win the RPBG Nurse of the Year Award. The award gave her reason to pause and appreciate the value others see in her work, fuelling her enthusiasm to continue developing her compassion, leadership, and commitment to the nursing profession.