New Glen Innes hospital boss helped Armidale hospital upgrade

The Health Service Manager and nurse spent two years as change manager during Armidale hospital's upgrade, helping organise everything from the colour of paint on the walls to getting staff prepared for shifting to the $60 million new facility.

Ms Ramsland said she always knew she wanted to be involved in health, but in high school had thoughts of working as a paramedic.

"It sounds very corny," she said.

"I really liked those high pressure situations, having to make some autonomous decision making but having the skills to be able to do it and help people in those times where it's pretty hard and quite challenging and emotional.

"And I think I liked that challenge of being able to help people in high pressure situations."

The new Glen Innes hospital boss grew up in Sydney but is a rural convert and in an interview with the Examiner said she never wanted to live in the capital again.

In her decade in the sector, she has worked in Bathurst, moved to Moree and worked as a nurse in their emergency department, then Armidale, and now Glen Innes.

Glen Innes hospital is no longer reliant on locum doctors to fill shifts on weekends. She said that medicos were attracted, like her, to the challenge regional areas pose.

"The requirements are that you have to treat what you have in front of you with what you have, so you get lots of varied experience from being in rural communities and I that's something that's really appealing.

"Hopefully more and more people are seeing that and hopefully the trend will be to come back out to these communities for the extra exposure."

A good day, though, is a day where the patient feels better.

"I think just having people from the community receive really fantastic and current evidence-based health care," she said.

"It's never a nice time when you're feeling ill or have a loved one who's ill, so if we can make that experience a little bit easier for that person and their family that's a good day."