BRISBANE’S Mary Daly knows exactly how hard her daughter Maddie worked to graduate from University of Queensland’s Nursing/Midwifery degree.
The Samford mother of five also completed the degree, graduating in December at the same time as her daughter.
And to top it off, mother and daughter have both secured positions in the Graduate Registered Nurse program for 2014 at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Mrs Daly said nursing must run in the family as second-oldest daughter Rosemary, 18, was just finishing the first year of the same degree.
“The interest in such a career was always there for me,” she said.
“I had initially wanted to do nursing straight out of high school when it was hospital-based.
“At the time, my application was not successful, so I pursued other work, got married and stayed home to raise our children.”
Mrs Daly said Maddie’s interest in nursing started with a health crisis in the family.
“When youngest daughter Lucy was six-and-a-half she had a golf-ball-sized brain tumour surgically removed at the Royal Children’s Hospital,” she said. “That definitely inspired Maddie to do nursing. I remember thinking then that I would still have liked to do nursing.”
Mrs Daly got a taste of the degree’s workload when Maddie started the course.
“She and I had coffee one morning and hatched the plan for me to undertake the Bachelor of Nursing, and that we could support each other and graduate together,” she said.
The Daly family lead a busy life at Sacred Heart Parish, Samford.
Husband Kym has been teaching at Brigidine College for 30 years.
Isaac, 16, and Nicholas, 13, attend Marist College Ashgrove. Nicholas’ twin sister Lucy is in Year 8 at Mt St Michael’s College, Ashgrove.
Maddie was 2009 school captain at Brigidine.
She is also involved in humanitarian work and is on her third trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia.
On the latest trip she went as a volunteer after two earlier UQ placements.
Maddie has been working as an assistant in nursing at the Royal Children’s Hospital for the past two years and will start in the Graduate Registered Nurse program in February.
Mary is looking forward to beginning at the hospital in April in her chosen field of oncology.
