Other People's Country- A woman's journey from suburbia to life as a remote area nurse

by Maureen Helen

Spurred on by an adventure in Thailand, she resolves to use her skills to work as a remote area nurse in an isolated Aboriginal settlement in WA's Pilbara region.
Faced with the terrible health problems of the community, inadequate equipment and a growing sense that she doesn't belong, Maureen battles her own crisis of confidence as well as the harshness and hostility of her surroundings as she struggles to adjust to a culture where she is the outsider.

248 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

Maureen Helen worked as a nurse, family counsellor, advocate and chief executive officer. After she retired from the full-time paid workforce, she completed a Doctor of Philosophy (Writing) degree.

Her first book, a memoir, Other People's Country was published in 2008.

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know how Maureen Helen managed to survive her first month in the Jigalong community in the Western Australian Pilbara region - as someone who has done on-call duty on a 2-person roster, I have no idea how you survive doing a month on-call all on your own among people who are either testing your limits or have no concept of "urgent" or "routine" medical issues!! I know I'd be much less patient than her if people were waking me up for a band-aid or because they took their last blood pressure tablet 3 days ago and want more in the middle of the night because they "think about it when [they] wake up in the night"!!

I'm also not sure how patient I could be with the cultural differences, but certainly not because I think my way is the only, or best, way of doing things, and there are things that the Martu people of the Jigalong community sound like they do better than we white people do. But the slower pace would frustrate me when there's so much stuff to be done. And yet, rushing people can end up in not achieving what you were hoping for anyway, so perhaps it's better to just take a deep breath and try to fit in with the local culture. But I definitely don't agree with the practice of blaming the nurse for a patient's death regardless of what he/she did or didn't do and potentially running the nurse out of town.

This was very much an eye-opening and well-written read - 3.5 stars.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any one of the true stories in Maureen Helen's memoir could be enacted as a thrilling drama, often a matter of life and death. But this is real life for Maureen and she has the ultimate responsibility of ensuring the best health care possible even when the patient's life is not always the highest priority compared with enormously important cultural obligations of the Jigalong Martu population
I became more and more compelled by Maureen's story. As a memoir, it is a story of perserverance, determination and self revelation and as a social history it conveys the difficulties and possibilities in the interaction of two cultures.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author spent several months in a health clinic at a remote village in Western Australia. Her descriptions of suffering from culture shock and then learning the ways of the Aborigine people are very interesting. She learns to deal with a variety of medical and social issues.

[(Eileen) Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put Maureen Helen's memoir of her time at Jigalong down. Her stories show immense courage and strength and provide honest, soul searching insights as Maureen navigated her way in a community and culture far removed from anything she had previously experienced.

[Jan Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

On interesting insight into a difficult problem.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was easy reading. I felt as though some issues were just glossed over, not enough depth. Perhaps, because I needed to study it for a uni course, and many of the questions related to occurrences which often only took up a paragraph. Much of what I got out of the book was inferred rather than actually read.