MACH Health

17/03/2026

Joining us is Kaniz Abbas, a former nurse manager with frontline and leadership experience and founder of Fruit from the STEM.

Kaniz created practical leadership guides for nurses stepping into management roles, including the Nurse Manager Survival Guide, helping clinicians transition from bedside expertise to leadership responsibility.

In this session we explore:
• The realities of becoming a nurse manager
• Why leadership preparation often falls short
• Supporting nurses transitioning into management
• Practical tools for sustainable leadership

16/03/2026

Patricia brings decades of lived nursing experience and reflects on how the profession was formed through responsibility, structure, and community. Her perspective explores what those earlier training environments built into nurses — and what that formation still leaves within the profession today.

This conversation explores:
• How nurses were formed under constraint
• What apprenticeship and responsibility created in nursing culture
• What endurance strengthened — and what it quietly suppressed
• What today’s generation of nurses is now being formed by

This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s perspective that only time and experience can offer

13/03/2026

Challenging the Norms of the Nursing Profession

We close the week with Victoria Hinds, a voice challenging long-standing expectations within the nursing profession.

Victoria speaks directly to the tension between professional identity, system expectations, and the quiet pressure many nurses feel to absorb challenges without question.

This session explores:
• Professional voice and identity in modern nursing
• The cultural expectations placed on nurses
• Why challenging norms is necessary for progress
• What a more sustainable profession could look like

This conversation isn’t about comfort — it’s about clarity.

12/03/2026

Challenging the Norms of Modern Nursing

Joining us again is Kimberley Maurer, known for her ability to challenge the narratives nursing has become comfortable repeating.

Kim brings sharp insight into the structural pressures shaping modern nursing — and the conversations the profession often avoids.

Expect a direct and thoughtful discussion exploring:
• The hidden pressures shaping nursing careers
• Why many professional conversations avoid root causes
• How systems influence behaviour and professional identity
• What must change if we want nurses to stay in the profession

When Kim speaks, the script often flips.

11/03/2026

Challenging the Norms of Modern Nursing

Joining us again is Kimberley Maurer, known for her ability to challenge the narratives nursing has become comfortable repeating.

Kim brings sharp insight into the structural pressures shaping modern nursing — and the conversations the profession often avoids.

Expect a direct and thoughtful discussion exploring:
• The hidden pressures shaping nursing careers
• Why many professional conversations avoid root causes
• How systems influence behaviour and professional identity
• What must change if we want nurses to stay in the profession

When Kim speaks, the script often flips.

10/03/2026

Changing the Face of Nurse Health and Wellbeing

Tonight we welcome Dean King, one of Australia’s leading nurse educators focused on transforming how we think about nurse health and wellbeing.

Dean has spent years observing the same pattern across healthcare systems: passionate nurses entering the workforce only to encounter environments that slowly erode their wellbeing.

Rather than accept this as inevitable, his work focuses on changing the trajectory — designing education, environments, and professional expectations that support sustainable nursing practice.

This conversation explores:
• The real drivers of nurse burnout
• Why wellbeing must become infrastructure, not an afterthought
• How education can reshape professional longevity
• What the next generation of nurses deserves from the profession

09/03/2026

Wise Nurse Elder: Nursing Formation and Generational Knowledge

We’re joined by Patricia Temple, our Wise Nurse Elder, bringing decades of lived nursing experience and reflection on what truly forms a nurse.

This session explores the foundations of nursing identity — from the structure and discipline of earlier training eras to the deeper question of what that formation leaves within us across a lifetime of practice.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s perspective.

Patricia invites us to reflect on:
• How nurses were formed under constraint
• What responsibility and apprenticeship built into the profession
• What endurance strengthened — and what it silenced
• What today’s generation of nurses is being formed by now

This is generational knowledge shared with intention.

06/03/2026

� Friday – Victoria Hinds (And a Special Launch)

We close the week with Victoria Hinds — and this one carries something extra.

Victoria doesn’t tiptoe around professional discomfort. She names it. She challenges the quiet compliance culture. She questions the expectations that nurses should absorb pressure without voice.

But this Friday isn’t just another sharp conversation.

There’s a special launch and announcement.

Something practical.
Something aligned with reclaiming professional identity.
Something built for nurses who are ready to stop shrinking inside systems that were never designed with them in mind.

Expect:

Directness

Clarity

A challenge to the norms

And a step forward, not just commentary

If you’ve followed Victoria’s lens on professional voice and courage, this is the next evolution.

Finish the week in the room.

05/03/2026

� Thursday Night – Liz McKinney

This Thursday we’re joined by Liz McKinney, bringing clarity, courage, and a genuinely different lens into the room.

Liz explores dementia through the perspective of forensic speech pathology — and what happens when we widen how we interpret behaviour, communication, and cognitive change.

This isn’t the usual dementia conversation.

It’s about:

What language patterns reveal beneath the surface

How communication breakdown is often misread as non-compliance

What nurses miss when we only look clinically, not linguistically

How widening perspective sharpens judgement

Liz challenges us to rethink how we assess, respond, and advocate — especially for those whose voices are already fading.

When we widen perspective, care becomes more precise.

And that’s where better nursing begins.

04/03/2026

We return to the steady presence of Patricia Temple, our Wise Nurse Elder.

Patricia represents something nursing urgently needs — generational perspective. The kind that isn’t reactive, isn’t trend-driven, and isn’t swayed by noise. It’s formed over decades of practice, responsibility, and moral weight carried quietly.

Her reflections aren’t nostalgia.
They are examination.

She speaks about formation — how nurses are shaped by structure, scarcity, hierarchy, community, and the unseen emotional load of the work. And more importantly, she asks what that shaping leaves behind.

What does endurance build?
What does it suppress?
What does it pass forward?

In a profession that moves quickly, Patricia slows us down long enough to remember that wisdom is earned, not manufactured.

This is not a history lesson.
It’s inheritance.

03/03/2026

Recruiting nurses overseas must work for all.

That was the message this week — and it’s a conversation we need to have honestly.

Let’s be clear.

International recruitment has propped up health systems for decades. The NHS. Australia. Canada. The Gulf. We would have collapsed without globally trained nurses.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

If we’re recruiting from countries with their own workforce shortages…
If we’re offering contracts that limit mobility…
If integration, career progression, and pastoral support are afterthoughts…

Then this isn’t workforce strategy. It’s workforce substitution.

As a nurse who has worked across continents, I’ve seen both sides. Global movement can be empowering. It can elevate families and careers. But it can also lead to isolation, deskilling, and silent moral distress.

We cannot talk about “ethical recruitment” while ignoring: • Power imbalance
• Underemployment of highly skilled clinicians
• Cultural isolation
• Retention failures after year one

If overseas recruitment is to work for all, it must include: ✔ Proper transition support
✔ Career mapping and leadership pathways
✔ Psychological safety
✔ Data on retention and wellbeing — not just vacancy fill rates

Filling a vacancy is not the same as building a workforce.

The real question is this:

Are we building sustainable nursing systems — or just moving the shortage around the globe?

If you’ve moved countries to nurse, what was your experience really like?

Letter: Howard Catton of the International Council of Nurses calls for a co-investment mechanism in global nursing education

02/03/2026

� Kim Maurer challenged the norms.Kimberley Maurer didn’t just recap the conference, she dissected it.

She pulled apart the energy in the room, the themes rising to the surface, and the quiet tension sitting underneath the applause.

Here’s what stood out:

Nurses are hungry for leadership — but not hierarchy.

Innovation is everywhere — but infrastructure is lagging.

Resilience is still being discussed — but redesign is the real need.

Community is strong — but system accountability is still uneven.

Kim challenged the polished language and asked the harder question:

Are we evolving the profession — or just rebranding the strain?

That’s the difference.

NurseFest 2026 showed momentum.
It showed creativity.
It showed nurses refusing to be small.

But it also revealed the gap between inspiration and implementation.

And that’s where the real work begins.

If you want the unfiltered breakdown — not the