Sometimes it’s taking a stroll in a client’s local surroundings, absorbing the environment, and having a conversation.
Sometimes it’s a simple coffee catch-up. Sometimes it’s just presence.
Eileen O’Connor’s Brown Nurses help disadvantaged people in Sydney to cope with chronic and complex health, cultural and social care challenges. They have been doing it for more than 100 years.
Even though she was seriously disabled by a spinal condition, O’Connor co-founded Our Lady’s Nurses of the Poor with Fr Edward McGrath in 1913 to help struggling poor and disabled at a time when there was no government-funded healthcare or welfare.
Her cause of canonisation has been approved by Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP and has been sent to the Vatican for review.
Back in the day, O’Connor’s sisters were dubbed the Brown Nurses because they wore a distinctive brown bonnet and cape. Today they continue to support the sick poor in Sydney and Macquarie Fields.
But their ministry is also continued by an independent service, ‘The Brown Nurses’, who work in the local government area of Sydney – although these days they wear blue shirts. As a Catholic health care provider, they work to ensure clients’ dignity and self-worth, build trust and provide hope, compassion and equitable access to care.
It is one of Australia’s oldest not-for-profit community nursing services.
Jo Toomey is one of these Brown Nurses. She has been a nurse for 30 years, the last two with her current employer. She spoke with The Catholic Weekly about their dedicated work.
“This is a job like I’ve never done before ever in my career, and I’ve worked in a lot of different places,” she said. “But I think the work that we’re doing here is really special.”
After decades of working in primary care, Toomey found the Brown Nurses almost by accident.
“I’ve been in GP practices, I’ve worked for Home Affairs and I even did a bit of work in vaccination centres during COVID,” she said.
“Then I saw this advert for the Brown Nurses, and I didn’t really know much about them so I started to do some research and I thought ‘this looks really interesting’. The work that we do is really amazing.”
Toomey admires O’Connor and believes her legacy will lead to her canonisation.
“She recognised that there were a lot of people across Sydney and other areas of NSW who were quite vulnerable and had complex care needs and that is still what we do today,” she said.
“I think she’s absolutely amazing and I really hope she goes all the way with canonisation because her legacy still carries on and we have some amazing work today which couldn’t happen without her and Fr McGrath taking the initiative and starting the Brown Nurses.”
Toomey believes the Brown Nurses’ work is effective because of their unique approach to health care.
“We’re still bound by a code of conduct, and we still have a model of care which we adhere to because of governance and other factors but the way we interact with our clients is quite different to what I’ve done in my career before,” she said.
She gave an example of how she interacts with clients.
“I’ve just been to see a guy who was having trouble navigating his aged care package,” she said.
“So I sat with him and rang the occupational therapist and sorted it out with him because there’s no way that he could have done that for himself because it can be a difficult process.
“So we do provide physical care but we also get to aid our clients with other aspects of their health in an indirect way.”
“We provide care and support through even the more logistical elements of someone’s health care. We’re not restricted by time,” she says.
“We don’t say ‘well, we only have 20 minutes so we’ll do as much as we can’. Instead, we get to stay for as long as the client needs us.”
The Brown Nurses’ nurse-led model of care is being studied in a research project sponsored by Australian Catholic University.
The community-engaged research project, funded by the Stakeholder Engaged Scholarship Unit at ACU, will evaluate the Brown Nurses’ person-centred services with a hope to share their unique nursing care model with other health care services working with vulnerable populations.
“Our work can be quite challenging in that sometimes we’re the only people our clients will see that week, or on a regular basis,” says Toomey. “But I think that can make our work much more meaningful and important.”
“Sometimes we just get to take them out for a coffee, or have lunch with them, and just be with them.
“It may not sound like much but it has such a positive effect and it makes the client and their environment become a bit healthier and happier.”
The Catholic Weekly spoke with Jo just before Christmas, a time which can be hard for the Brown Nurses’ clients.
“Christmas may be a time for celebration, but for some people, they don’t want to go anywhere for various reasons,” she said.
“So what the nurses are doing this year is going around to clients this Christmas and handing out some meals to them and staying with them for a little just so they get to be with someone on Christmas and to make sure they don’t feel alone during what must be a difficult time for them.”
“I do think that divine intervention, or providence, or whatever you want to call it, has a large presence in our day-to-day work here, and certainly in mine,” Jo said.
“The work is hard work, and it’s tough and it’s confronting and some of the stuff that we see is not very nice at all.
“But I just absolutely love my job.”
