Tom Gannon
Latrobe Regional Hospital said goodbye to a long-standing staff member earlier this month, who many in the Valley might have met before but would likely find it difficult to remember this encounter.
During Angela Scully’s time working in the Valley as a midwife and later Nurse Unit manager at LRH, she delivered thousands of babies and played an instrumental role in supporting new mums.
Having been involved in the delivery of thousands of babies in the region, Ms Scully said she often comes across these babies when they are older and has even delivered multiple generations within the same family.
“I’ve had times where the grandmothers will come and say you were here when my child was born and now you’re here for my grandchild, so that’s a nice thing,” she said.
“Often I’ll be down the street and I’ll have people come up to me and tell me I was there when this child who’s standing next to them at six foot tall was born 21 years ago which makes me laugh.”
These run-ins are even popping up at work with Ms Scully now having staff she delivered as children come back years later to develop their midwifery skills at LRH.
Ms Scully has worked in Traralgon hospitals for the past three decades, originally as a midwife at the old Traralgon Hospital and then moved to LRH in 1998 where she saw herself promoted to Nurse Unit Manager in 2010.
Making the move to the Valley from metropolitan Melbourne, Ms Scully and her partner were only meant to stay for 18 months, but decided to instead establish their family in Traralgon and join a community they have grown to love.
“We probably could’ve moved on but because he and I both loved our jobs we stayed,” she said.
“There’s a lovely community spirit in the Valley which I think is really important and is something that you don’t see as much in metro (areas), we’ve been through some terrible fires here and we’ve had some disasters, but the community always pulls together and it’s great to be part of that.”
Ms Scully said despite missing her team at LRH, she felt it was the right time to retire and is excited to let the next generation of midwives continue to see the hospital grow.
“I’m feeling sad, I’ll miss the team, I’ll miss the mothers, I’ll miss the work, but I feel that it’s time to move on and I’m looking forward to retirement,” she said.
“I’ve always loved my job and I love looking after women and families, but I’m now at the stage where the next generation are having babies so I feel like the time has come for me to move along and retire and I’ve loved every minute of my work so I feel it’s a good time to let someone young and new take over.”
Reflecting on her time at LRH, Ms Scully said she values the hospital’s partnership with Federation University and has loved being able to guide new midwives through the early stages of their career.
“The job isn’t something you would do for money, it’s something you would do because you love it and I think that there’s nothing better than working with a team and seeing staff develop over the years, one of the think I love to see is a lot of staff we trained here have gone from being students and now they’ve blossomed as midwives,” she said.
“We are lucky we’ve got a good partnership with Federation University so a lot of the midwives here have come through that system and are doing their training at LRH, I think that’s a great thing because we develop our own midwives and I think that’s really important because people who train locally tend to stay local.”
Ms Scully said she was looking forward to taking it easy in retirement and seeing more of the world once international flights resume.
“My husband retired two years ago so I’m going to join him, travel, catch up with family and enjoy retirement,” she said.
