Sidney Sax Medal 2019 awared to Vici Wade

“Vicki’s mum was one of the first Aboriginal women in the area to become an enrolled nurse. Vicki herself continued along this path and began training to be a registered nurse in 1976. She then became a specialist cardiac nurse and strong advocate for improving Aboriginal health, having witnessed Aboriginal women ‘dying far too young from heart disease’.”

The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association’s Sidney Sax Medal winner for 2019 is Aboriginal nurse and heart health advocate Vicki Wade.

The Medal is awarded to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the development and improvement of the Australian healthcare system in the field of health services policy, organisation, delivery and research.

‘Vicki has demonstrated outstanding service and commitment to Aboriginal health, particularly heart health and cardiac nursing, in a career spanning over 40 years’, Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) Chief Executive Alison Verhoeven said.

‘And, like the late Sid Sax himself, she has been highly influential through being consultative and respectful.’

Vicki is a Nyoongar woman from rural south west Perth. The women in her family were healers—beginning with her Nan Lily, who helped Aboriginal women at the Gnowangerup mission. Lily had no formal education because Aboriginal people at the time were denied it.

Subsequently, Vicki’s mum was one of the first Aboriginal women in the area to become an enrolled nurse. Vicki herself continued along this path and began training to be a registered nurse in 1976. She then became a specialist cardiac nurse and strong advocate for improving Aboriginal health, having witnessed Aboriginal women ‘dying far too young from heart disease’.

Vicki is currently Senior Cultural Advisor with Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) Australia, an organisation based at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin. RHD Australia is dedicated to lessening the burden of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease in Australia.

Vicki was also, for many years, leader of the National Aboriginal Health Unit at the National Heart Foundation and played a key role in the Lighthouse Hospital Project, an initiative of the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association and the Heart Foundation, funded by the Australian Government.

This recently-concluded 8-year project successfully drove changes in hospitals across Australia to achieve better care and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with coronary heart disease. Notably, exemplars from the Lighthouse Hospital Project have been highlighted in the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare’s case studies for best practice healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Vicki says she has had a very rewarding, challenging and privileged career in many areas of health: ‘I‘ve worked in many outstanding teams without wanting recognition or praise for myself. I’m not one to seek accolades at all. But I am humbled to have my name among the many outstanding recipients of this medal’, she said.

Sidney Sax Medal winners and profiles can be accessed at ahha.asn.au/sidney-sax-medal.