Commander Sheena MacDougall
Sheena Frances MacDougall was born on 11 August 1934 in Geelong, Victoria, to William and Mary MacDougall, respectively a Scottish forestry officer and a school teacher from New Zealand. A World War I returned serviceman, her father died when she was only 10 years old and she became a Legacy ward.
Schooled at Morongo Presbyterian Girls College in Geelong, she was an advanced student and finished her secondary schooling at only 14 years of age. At 17 years of age, after attending the Geelong Institute of Technology (now Deakin University) for three years studying dietetics, she decided that nursing held a better future than food.
Sheena completed nursing at Geelong Hospital before travelling to the UK with her sister and working in the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London for twelve months, taking time off every two months to ride a bicycle around the English countryside and through Europe.
On return to Australia, Sheena qualified as a midwife at Melbourne Women’s Hospital before moving to the Box Hill Hospital where she ended up in charge of operating theatres.
Descending from a long line of naval officers (she is in fact a descendant of Nelson’s step-son), she joined the Royal Australian Navy Nursing Service (RANNS) in August 1965 on an initial short service appointment of six years.
Her first impressions of the Navy nursing standards were not good. Nursing training of sick berth attendants was very basic and it was obvious to her that medics were not properly trained. Consequently they could not do some of the things they might otherwise have been expected to do. These impressions, and the desire to improve the service, saw the beginning of what was to be a career-long focus on the training and education of the Navy’s medical personnel.
While serving at HMAS Cerberus she attended the Royal College of Nursing Victoria completing a 12-month Diploma of Education [Nursing] and was made a Fellow of the College of Nursing Australia. The Diploma equipped her to implement better medical training standards. With help from the senior medics at the Medical Training School and previous instructors such as Chief Petty Officer Buzzecote, a registered nurse who had transferred from the Royal Navy, she developed a new syllabus with new, higher standards.
Members of the Royal Australian Navy Nursing Service, Sister MacDougall (left) Senior Sister Scarfe (middle) and Matron Jones (right) attending a ceremony at the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne. c.1966
In 1974, on the strength of only one year’s experience in midwifery, Sheena posted to HMAS Tarangau at Lombrum Point on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, where her midwifery and medical skills were tested every day. Working alongside two RAN Doctors she delivered babies and assisted in the operating theatre, as well as other nursing duties. On one occasion she assisted in the removal of a knife from an indigenous man’s heart and saved a man’s gangrenous leg by, thinking laterally in the absence of the more conventional oxygen tent, filling a blow up splint with oxygen and letting it circulate over the wound.
On return from PNG in 1975, Sheena ran the hospital operating theatre at HMAS Penguin for 12 months before returning to HMAS Cerberus as Tutor Sister in the Medical Training School. There she became part of the team that developed the Advanced Medical Training Course for senior Medics posted to ships without a doctor, a first in the many courses that followed for Paramedics.
On promotion to Commander in August 1984, Sheena was posted to Navy Office in Canberra as Director of Nursing Services and Health Service Training. While in this position, she began to research the links between the use of drugs and alcohol by Navy personnel and corresponding accident rates in an effort to educate personnel on the possible consequences of drug and alcohol use. This was the early forerunner of the Alcohol and Drug Program Adviser (ADPA) system in today’s Navy.
By 1985 Sheena was the RANNS senior nursing officer when the Nursing Service was fully integrated into the RAN in July of that year.
Sheena served in the Royal Australian Navy Nursing Service for 20 years, becoming the RANNS Senior Nursing Officer before the service was fully integrated into the RAN in 1985.
Sheena remained at Navy Office for the rest of her career and for the last six months prior to retirement in August 1989, was the Director of Defence Force Nursing Policy working with her Army and Air Force counterparts to improve nursing standards across the three services.
Sheena retired from the RAN after a distinguished 24-year career on 11 August 1989.
