{"id":614117,"date":"2026-04-18T01:50:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/614117\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T01:50:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T01:50:41","slug":"outback-nurse-hamish-briggs-captures-life-working-in-remote-wa-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/614117\/","title":{"rendered":"Outback nurse Hamish Briggs captures life working in remote WA on social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term “content creator” encompasses a broad spectrum of social media entrepreneurs, from “MumTok” to fashion influencers to “tech bros”.<\/p>\n

But Hamish Briggs has taken his penchant for social creativity in a different direction.<\/p>\n

He works as a nurse in Western Australia’s northern outback and documents his trips around remote Indigenous communities like Balgo, Bililuna and Bidyadanga, more than 3,000 kilometres north of Perth.<\/p>\n

Mr Briggs’s online popularity has come amid workforce shortages in the healthcare sector, according to Rural Health West.<\/p>\n

It is something Mr Briggs hopes will change.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Mr Briggs has worked in communities including Balgo, Bililuna and Bidyadanga in the Kimberley. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

“You’re never going to have the bells and whistles like you do in a hospital out remotely,” Mr Briggs said.<\/p>\n

“But it teaches you extraordinary skills you’ll never learn anywhere else.<\/p>\n

“You can work under immense pressure, and at the end of the day, you always put your patient first and always get it done.”<\/p>\n

Growing following<\/p>\n

Despite the Kimberley’s population of about 40,000 people, Mr Briggs has more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 35,000 on Instagram.<\/p>\n

“Over the past year and a half, since being remote, it’s grown a lot \u2014 just in the last two months being on Facebook, I’m nearly at 20,000 new followers,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a different generation of people on Facebook, compared to TikTok and Instagram, it’s your real rough, rugged boomers.”<\/p>\n

Facebook is a popular form of social media in remote Indigenous communities, according to Mr Briggs, enabling direct communication.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Mr Briggs plans to work in the Northern Territory for a while, before heading back to the Kimberley. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Mr Briggs became a nurse after COVID and used social media to document his time in the outback.<\/p>\n

“When I was starting my nursing career, a lot of nurses didn’t want to be nurses anymore; there was a lot of negativity \u2014 underpaid, understaffed, overworked,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Then I did this video like, ‘Woo hoo, I’m a nurse, day one, living,’ and people were like, ‘Wow, there’s the joy, that is why I started nursing.'”<\/p>\n

Then his platform “took off”, and most days since, Mr Briggs has posted “every job, every new skill and every adventure”.<\/p>\n

Living remote<\/p>\n

Working in a remote Indigenous community pushes people outside their comfort zone, according to Mr Briggs.<\/p>\n

He is often functioning as a “primary healthcare service”, with no doctors, limited resources and nurses, and sometimes a 10-hour drive away from the closest town.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Rural Health West says there is a chronic healthcare workforce shortage in remote WA. (ABC News: Steven Schubert)<\/p>\n

“It’s such a big thing when you live in Indigenous-populated towns \u2014 this forever-growing healthcare gap,” Mr Briggs said.<\/p>\n

Mr Briggs believes social media helps bridge this gap, as communities can see themselves represented online and see the kind of healthcare that will be received.<\/p>\n

“Having communities reaching out [online] saying, ‘Please come work in our community, we’d love to show you around,’ has been exceptional,” he said.<\/p>\n

Rural Health West’s deputy chief executive, Kelli Porter, said the healthcare gap was not helped by workforce shortages.<\/p>\n

The shortages compound burnout for existing workers, through higher patient loads and overtime demands, leading to reduced respite and workforce attrition, according to Ms Porter.<\/p>\n

But it is equally as hard to attract new healthcare workers to the regions, Ms Porter said, due to limited infrastructure, affordable housing and childcare.<\/p>\n

“The care actually can become quite fragmented, it can be inconsistent because there’s a high turnover of staff or gaps in services \u2026 cultural safety is often compromised,” Ms Porter said.<\/p>\n

“So chronic conditions, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, all quite prevalent on country \u2014 that continuity of care is missing, and it does impact people and their health outcomes.”<\/p>\n

Ms Porter said social media could be a tool in spreading awareness about “excellent career opportunities” and the benefits of working in the outback.<\/p>\n

“[What] we find often is people just haven’t had the exposure to country and the opportunities that are there,” she said.<\/p>\n

“All forms of media, particularly social media, which is so personable, help reinforce the message and show people what it’s like living and working on country.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The term “content creator” encompasses a broad spectrum of social media entrepreneurs, from “MumTok” to fashion influencers to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,298146,137,500,74017,1202,298147,22561,37626,298148,261604,1314,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-614117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-hamish-briggs","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-influencer","14":"tag-instagram","15":"tag-kelli-porter","16":"tag-kimberley","17":"tag-kununurra","18":"tag-outback-nursing","19":"tag-rural-health-west","20":"tag-social-media","21":"tag-tiktok"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}