To know Veronica Casey is to revere her leadership, compassion, person-centred care, her emotional intelligence, and her absolute devotion to building the nursing profession into the powerhouse within Metro South Health that it is today.
It was in 2006 that the now Executive Director of Nursing and Midwifery for Metro South saw the bat-signal from across the river and made the journey to PAH for what was intended as a three-month secondment.
“My transition from over the river was short-term ahead of my plan to retire to undertake a full time PHD,” Veronica said. “Clearly I had poor competency at retiring because here I am 18 years later, finally retiring.”
What resulted was a relationship that has stood the test of time. Veronica fell in love with PA and didn’t PAH fall in love with Veronica! She cleaned up PA-city fighting culture fires, building resilience, developing the capacity of nursing by embedding the Magnet Program and pulling together a nursing leadership team around her that would take PA from a culture of blame to the dizzy heights of success for nursing services.
“I loved PA so much - its courage, its honesty, and the leadership. I stayed because of all of you, not just the nursing cohort and the journey we were on with Magnet,” she said.
“There was a vision forward, a focus on safety, a dedication to patient care, the research agenda, and a commitment to being better than best – but never arrogant.”
It was 2012 that she was appointed as the Metro South Health Executive Director of Nursing and Midwifery Services which she will continue until retirement – and she maintained the massive workload of her role as the PAH EDNS as well until 2021.
Veronica has also served two terms on the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare, was the first International Magnet Commissioner for the American Nurses Credentialing Center from 2010 to 2017 and was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2019.
She says that the multidisciplinary team approach is absolutely essential to the work done in the hospital setting and we should never be so siloed that we lose sight of what we are here to do.
“Whether it is direct patient care, a specialty or a support role, everything done by every person in the health service is relevant to an outcome,” she said.
The outcomes of Veronica’s leadership just kept coming. She led nursing and PAH through all three Magnet® re-designations, PAH was the first nursing organisation to achieve the highest nursing culture in a public government facility in Australia, and she strategically led the Pathway to Excellence program across all Metro South facilities and services making it the only Australian organisation to achieve this to date.
All the while, Veronica was responding to the bat-signal: a staff member collapsing in the corridor, an early labour in the office, a crisis here, a team experiencing a distressing day there, special Christmas Day rounds to thank everybody year-after-year – she had a way of materialising wherever kindness, support and care was needed.
“What I wish for everybody is to continue embracing courage and kindness. PA is a great place to work, Metro South Health is an amazing health service to work in, you’ve got amazing leadership,” she said. “Enjoy the fruits of the work you have done, but always remember that it is never finished. There is more work to do.”
While Veronica’s final day in Metro South Health is 18 October, in her tradition of never retiring, she will continue in her role as the Chair of the Nursing & Midwifery Board of Australia and has an open invitation as an honorary guest at every nursing event in MSH into the future.