Neurodivergent Nurses Australia is an independent, disability-led organisation advocating for neurodivergent nurses, midwives and nursing students across Australia. Our work is grounded in lived experience and a strengths-based, social-relational model of disability — the recognition that the barriers neurodivergent nurses face are produced by workplaces and systems that weren’t designed with neurodiversity in mind.
Who we’re for
Neurodivergent nurses, midwives and nursing students across Australia — including but not limited to those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, or co-occurring profiles, diagnosed or self-identified. We also write for healthcare employers, educators, policy makers, and anyone working alongside neurodivergent nurses.
How we work
Neurodivergent Nurses Australia is led with values of lived-experience leadership, transparency, and evidence-grounded advocacy.
What neurodiversity means
Human minds work in many different ways. We each think, learn, remember, communicate and sense the world a little differently, and that variety across the human population is what neurodiversity describes. It belongs to all of us, in much the same way that no two bodies or personalities are quite alike.
What does neurodivergent mean?
Some people’s minds work in ways that sit outside what schools, workplaces and systems have come to expect as standard. Neurodivergent is the umbrella word usually used for those people. It includes autistic people, people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia or dyscalculia, and the many people whose profiles combine more than one of these. The language has its roots in the autistic community of the 1990s, where the Australian sociologist Judy Singer helped give a name to something many people already knew about themselves.
You don’t need a formal diagnosis to call yourself neurodivergent. Many people come to understand their own minds later in life, or recognise themselves without ever pursuing an assessment, and self-identification is valid here.
Neurodivergence appears to be common. Current research suggests somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent of the population may be neurodivergent, which would mean as many as one in five nurses, working right now in every corner of the Australian health system.
Strengths, and barriers that can be built in
Ask neurodivergent nurses what they bring to their work and you’ll often hear about noticing patterns others miss, strong intuition, deep focus, creative problem-solving, and empathy that comes from knowing what it feels like to be misunderstood. Research with neurodivergent professionals describes many of the same strengths, and every individual brings their own particular mix.
Neurodivergent people can also run into real difficulty at work and in study, and where that difficulty comes from matters. Our work rests on a strengths-based, social-relational understanding of disability: when a job depends on noisy environments, rigid routines, unwritten social rules and training delivered only one way, the environment itself can become the barrier. Redesigning the environment tends to shrink those barriers, often for neurodivergent staff and everyone else alike.
Language matters
We use identity-first language, such as “autistic nurse”, reflecting the preference many neurodivergent people have expressed, and because the way we talk about ourselves can shape how others see us. At the same time, your language for yourself is yours. However you choose to describe your own mind is right.
If you’d like to go deeper, our blog shares plain-language information on workplace rights, reasonable adjustments and advocacy, and our Support and More page lists organisations supporting neurodivergent people across Australia.
Our founder
Jessie Smithers (she/her) — Founder
Neurodivergent Nurses Australia was founded by Jessie Smithers, a registered nurse and doctoral researcher. Her work brings together over a decade of clinical nursing, lived experience of neurodivergence, and disability-led research on the neurodivergent nursing workforce. Jessie leads the organisation’s research, advocacy and community work.
Get in touch
Contact us for media enquiries, collaboration, or to suggest content.