21 January 2019

Ms Meinema comes into the position after working as the Director of Nursing and Midwifery at St John of God Murdoch Hospital where she was responsible for over 1,800 nurses and caregivers. She previously led Glengarry Private Hospital.

St John of God Health Care Group Chief Executive Officer Dr Shane Kelly said Dani’s experience and leadership would be invaluable to enhancing patient experience and nursing care provided throughout the organisation.

“Dani has deep clinical experience, and has strong senior leadership experience within private healthcare which will enable her to lead the key strategic initiatives focused on enhancing patient experience by fostering a safe, high-performing and patient-centric culture,” he said.

“She has a great understanding of the challenges and opportunities that exist in healthcare, but most importantly she has demonstrated a strong commitment to the nursing profession, to improving patient outcomes and experience, and to the Mission of St John of God Health Care.”

Dani said she was looking forward to developing strategies and plans to enhance patient experience.

“Nursing care and patient experience is more important than ever in the private healthcare sector right now,” she said.

“I will be looking to work with our clinicians, managers, support staff and many others to develop and implement strategies to continually improve our service quality in order to ensure that our patients highly value their care experience.

Dani said empowering nurses to develop initiatives, which enhance their care at the bedside, would also be her priority.

“I am going to focus on helping to enable our managers and nursing caregivers at the bedside to come up with initiatives that are patient-centred; by asking them to think of what they can do to make our patient’s feel special; and to remind them that providing patients with a really good experience goes hand-in-hand with safe, high quality care," she said.

Dani is just the third person to be appointed to the position after the Group’s most recent Director of Nursing Cynthia Dowell took up a role with Calvary Health Care as Regional CEO Victoria and Tasmania in late 2018.

Ms Meinema starts as Group Director of Nursing and Patient Experience on 21 January 2019.