Adjunct Professor Alanna Geary

Griffith Health's 2022 Outstanding Alumnus

Master of Health Science in Infection Control

A fascination with her grandmother’s starched white nurse’s cap began Adjunct Professor Alanna Geary’s love for nursing. “In those days all nurses wore caps, and it sounds silly but I can remember walking around my grandmother’s house with her cap on as a child. I always wanted to be a nurse and I can honestly say there’s not a single day of my career that I’ve regretted my decision.”

After 42 years in the profession, with positions spanning from frontline nursing to her current role as Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer for Metro North Health, Alanna has had an enormous impact on patients, colleagues and the industry. It’s this dedication and love for the field, that made Alanna the ideal recipient of a 2022 Griffith University Outstanding Alumni Award.

“It’s really exciting,” she says of her win. “Not just for me personally but it’s great for the profession of nursing and midwifery. I am indebted to the people who have assisted me on my career journey.  It also demonstrates to my peers and colleagues, and of course my family, that there is value in hard work and that consistency pays off.

“I love what I do,” she continues. “I am so very much a nurse and midwife. Yes, these days I am more of an administrator but one of the things I value is that I can inform nursing and midwifery practice and make it better for the nurses and midwives delivering frontline care.

“Nurses and midwives are very much part of a team. We're working together to achieve the best possible outcomes for the patient and their families. I'm really proud of the fact that I can contribute to that and if people ask me what I do, I don’t say 'I’m a chief nurse', I say 'I’m a nurse'. We’re all paid to do a job and each of those jobs adds value to the patient journey differently.”

Alanna has been the Chief Nursing and Midwifery officer, Metro North Health, since 2014.  In this role she is the principal advisor on all nursing and midwifery services in the health service, working to “promote a healthier Queensland”. Throughout her prestigious career, Alanna held several concurrent leadership positions dedicated and designed to improve nursing and midwifery services, role expansion and innovation. A few of these roles include chair of the National Nurse Executive Faculty, Australian College of Nursing, and chair of the Executive Director of Nursing and Midwifery Forum for Queensland Health.

Her work has substantially contributed to both the growth and the high-quality reputation of the nursing and midwifery industry. As nursing director of Cancer Care Services she created the vision and strategy to implement the Cancer Care Nursing Services Professorial Precinct and the establishment of a dedicated Cancer Care Nursing Research Unit. She was awarded the Premier’s Award for Excellence in Leadership for her contribution to this latter initiative.

She also shared the role of Incident Commander during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Her Griffith Master of Health Science in Infection Control made dealing with the pandemic and the problems that came with it much easier. “It was an incredibly tiring time, it still is,” she says. “But I've been really buoyed by the absolute resilience and willingness to step up and not just by nurses and midwives, but all health professionals and the people who support health professionals.

“Our staff were and are amazing. We brought on more new nursing and midwifery graduates in those two years than we've ever brought on before and it made me realise the opportunities we have to grow the nursing and midwifery workforce.”

Not content to just do her official duties, Alanna recently stepped on a treadmill to walk nearly 200 kilometres to raise money for charity. “The expectation of a nurse or a midwife on the floor is that they are on their feet every day for a minimum of eight hours,” she explains. “During COVID, many of them were on their feet for up to 16 hours, trying to look after patients. I walked to highlight that even though I wasn’t frontline, I was walking with my team.

“I'm a proud nurse and midwife and I wanted to acknowledge my colleagues.  And if I could raise a few thousand on the way, then that was a good thing to do.”

When asked how she got to where she is today, Alanna says it wasn’t by design. “I call myself the accidental leader because honestly, if you said to me 30 years ago this is where I'd be, I probably would have said no,” she says. “But at some point, somebody saw something in me that I hadn't seen yet and steered me into a clinical nurse position, then into leadership roles and now here I am.

“I've so enjoyed the journey and I have been so lucky to have so many great people around me.”

Her biggest piece of advice to the healthcare workers of the future is to never turn down an opportunity. “Never say no!” she says. “There have been opportunities along the way where I thought, ‘Dear God why are they asking me to do that job? I don’t have the skillset.’ But you do! Get as many feathers in your cap as you can; there’s no such thing as bad experience. Never be afraid to seek assistance. There is always someone who will know more than you, but by seeking their expertise and advice it will make your job so much easier and you never know where it will take you.”

When asked what’s next for her, Alanna says she isn’t sure, but she knows her work isn’t finished yet. “People do ask me, ‘When are you going to retire?’ And I can't retire yet. I've got too much that I still have to achieve, or at least put us on a journey to achieve it.

“I see that I have a unique opportunity to develop that next group of nurses and midwives and I feel that as a ‘guardian of the professions’, my role is to make sure that the next group of professionals is ready … I was mentored and guided by some amazing nurses and midwives and I hope that when I do finally ‘hang up my cap’ I will have left the profession in a better place than when I came to it 42 years ago.”