Sally Putland was honoured with a Medal of Distinction after almost half a century of leading the way in remote children’s health. Photo: Supplied.
After more than 40 years of dedicating her life to improving the health outcomes of Australian families, a Cape York midwifery leader has received one of the most prestigious children’s health awards available to health professionals.
Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service’s Sally Putland was announced as a recipient of the 2025 Children’s Health Queensland Medal of Distinction late last month, an amalgamation of decades of dedication, leadership and care in the fields of clinical practice and community health.
For the first time, the Medal of Distinction was awarded in two distinct categories, Clinical Excellence and Community Impact, with Ms Putland, who is the nurse midwife unit manager for the Midwifery Navigation and Maternal Child Health Outreach Service, crowned the winner of the Community Impact category.
“I actually felt very overwhelmed – it was a very big honour to be acknowledged in that way,” she said.
“None of those achievements are done alone; everything that you do is always done in a team, and it’s always done with the communities.
“If you could chip little pieces of the medal out and run around and give it to all the people that were part of your career, that would be a brilliant way of doing it.”
Growing up in a remote community in the Northern Territory and later raising her children there, Ms Putland said her lived experience had shaped her passion for improving health outcomes outside of metropolitan areas.
“I had firsthand experience of some of the challenges that were being faced, and I just wanted to help people, in some small way, overcome some of those challenges,” she said.
“[I wanted to] bring care closer to home, and provide a level of healthcare and family wellbeing that they’re entitled to, that they shouldn’t not be getting just because they live on their own Country.
“The passion to be a midwife nurse and work in health was with me from when I was tiny, mum reckons, but the urge to be supporting out in remote communities came with the lifestyle that I lived with my family.”
As the manager of the Midwifery Navigation team, Ms Putland plays an instrumental role in the experiences of Cape York women who travel to Cairns to give birth, offering non-clinical support in navigating a challenging and overwhelming time.
In July 2023, she and her team also established the Maternal Child Health Outreach Service for southern Cape York communities, further strengthening trust and rapport with the remote women and their families.
“We have a small team of midwife child health nurses who travel out to a select number of communities across the Cape … and we do the antenatal care in community, the postnatal care when they come home, and the child healthcare for the kids up to 16,” she explained.
“We’ve evolved a lot of positive stakeholder engagement, we’ve seen the vaccination rates for the children improve, and we’ve seen an improved number of antenatal visits.”
Children’s Health Queensland board chair Heather Watson said the prestigious award honoured individuals who had dedicated their lives to improving outcomes for children and young people in Queensland.
“Sally’s unwavering commitment to community-led care has transformed the healthcare experience for women, children and families in some of our most remote communities,” she said.
