Journal Tag: opportunity

Apply Now: Shape the Future as Our Practice Manager

Practice manager

Join us on our mission to transform health and fertility care as our new Practice Manager. If you’re passionate about natural medicine and leadership, this is your opportunity to lead two groundbreaking practices into the future of holistic health.

We are searching for a passionate and driven Practice Manager to lead and support our dynamic team of natural health professionals at Fertile Ground Health Group and The Melbourne Apothecary. This is an exciting opportunity for someone who thrives in a collaborative, fast-paced environment and is ready to contribute to the growth and success of these two pioneering businesses in natural medicine. 

We highly value diversity, inclusivity and community. Our practitioners and staff are from various cultural backgrounds, of varying ages (20s to 70s), with beautiful and unique personalities and identities. We serve everyone in the community who chooses to access our care and will always do our best to be responsive to the needs of each individual.

About The Role

At Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary, you won’t just manage operations—you’ll play a key part in shaping the future of holistic health care. We are seeking someone with the skills to grow our practice with us, whilst nurturing a team of people (currently 5 staff and 21 practitioners) who are deeply passionate about making a positive difference in our patients’ lives. This a full-time, permanent, in-person role.

Salary Range

Salary range commensurate with experience plus perks, with additional benefits for high performance.

$100,000-$120,000

Key Experience Required
  • Experience with managing business operations in a healthcare profession / equivilent transferrable skills.
  • Experience with managing and leading a team of (minimum 5) people.
  • Experience and tact with conflict resolution and maintaining relationships.
  • Sales experience.
  • Cultivating and fostering an integrated team culture.
  • Clear and responsive understanding of the complementary, integrative and collaborative health environment.
  • Demonstrated experience in business development – strategic planning and project execution, resulting in company growth.
  • Experience proactively implementing improvement and change initiatives.
  • Experience using practice administration systems, social media platforms, website and customer email communications platforms.
Key Responsibilities Overview:

Clinical operations

Maintain and refine operations, including staff training, onboarding, and management of reception and dispensary teams. Optimise practice management software to streamline patient journeys.

Practice growth and promotions

Lead strategic initiatives to expand the practice, build referral partnerships, and establish new sites and telehealth offerings. Engage with marketing efforts, drive customer relationships, and inspire practitioner team growth.

Team Support

Oversee staff performance reviews, practitioner meetings, and maintain regular check-ins with directors.

Key Skills Required

The successful candidate will demonstrate the following:

  • Inspiring Leadership: You know how to bring out the best in those around you, guiding teams with a supportive, motivational approach.
  • Excellent Communication: strong management, diplomacy and communication skills.
  • Creative Thinking: You’re someone who sees challenges as opportunities and is excited about taking the reins of business development and scaling. You have a passion for  relationship building, unique marketing, optimising systems and driving growth with a charismatic and positive character.
  • Collaborative Spirit: We value connection and teamwork across every layer of our business – from staff to patients to referral partners. Your ability to foster these connections is key to our shared success.
  • Creativity: To implement solutions in a dynamic environment – multitasking and high level organisational skills are essential. 
  • Analytical precision and finesse: Enabling you to oversee and easily write and implement workplace protocols and systems. 
  • Self motivation: You’re a self-starter, dedicated to aligning with our vision and driving the practice forward with enthusiasm and rolling out project implementation to completion.
  • Excellent time management: Efficiency and the ability to prioritise and delegate tasks in a supportive and positive way.
  • Work ethic: Strong and dynamic.
Values Alignment

At Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary, our values aren’t just words—they’re the foundation of everything we do. As Practice Manager, you will live and breathe these values, leading a team that prioritises collaboration, co-creation, connection, inclusivity, and exceptional standards of care. You’ll have the opportunity to shape not only your team but also your own career in a place where personal and professional development is truly supported.

We’re looking for someone who will contribute to a supportive and creative work environment, fostering a culture of care, collaboration, and innovation.

Ready To Grow With Us?

If you’re excited to bring your talents to a place where your leadership can directly impact the health and happiness of others on a large scale, we’d love to hear from you.

We will be building our team to meet demand for upcoming rapid scaling and growth alongside our collaboration with another large national brand. The successful candidate for this role will show passion and capacity to drive new initiatives in this exciting space and will be a leader in this collaboration. They will also resonate personally with our practice values, as we are a values-led practice.

Apply now

At Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary, we believe in creating great work that transforms lives. If you do too, we’re excited to meet you.

  1. Send your cover letter and resume to Charmaine Dennis and Carly Woods at management@fertileground.com.au.
  2. We value creativity in how you present yourself – unique applications welcome. 
  3. We will be interviewing as soon as the right candidates land in our inbox. Apply now.
Closing Date

15 November 2024

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” ~ Steve Jobs

What is Fertile Ground Health Group?

Fertile Ground Health Group is a well established and highly regarded multidisciplinary practice with a strong focus on supporting people who struggle with fertility issues to create healthy families at any stage of their reproductive life and health. With 5+ staff and 20+ practitioners providing expert acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, naturopathy, nutrition, osteopathy, massage, breath therapy, counselling and birth support, we have been collaborating with medical and allied heath to provide the best support for our patients for over 20 years in practice.

What is The Melbourne Apothecary? (The MA)

The Melbourne Apothecary was created to provide Melbourne’s first prescription-only naturopathic dispensary, serving the Fertile Ground Health Group team as well as filling prescriptions for Naturopaths and university student naturopathic clinics all over Australia. The MA serves to protect the street level privacy of our fertility and IVF patients (for those who need it) along with increasing accessibility of our general health services for the benefit of our community. It is a truly beautiful space and strives to be an example of what is possible.

Where are we located?

Located in a vibrant part of Melbourne with fantastic cafés, shops and transport links, you’ll be working in a beautiful, Victorian terrace on bustling Smith Street, Collingwood.

Join our Reception & Dispensing Team

reception and dispensing team

This is your opportunity to join our wonderful team Reception and Dispensing Team at Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary. We are now opening up applications and feel excited to interview the right candidate/s.

This is a reception role with a difference. You are a highly valued member of our team and your role is considered crucial to the success of this practice. You will be challenged to grow your skills and be exposed to many opportunities to develop through a variety of tasks, responsibilities and interactions with some of the best practitioners in Melbourne.

This is a role that really draws on your multi-tasking and problem solving capacity.

As part of our Reception & Dispensing Team your main responsibilities are:

  • Providing superior customer service at Reception greeting patients, answering incoming calls for enquiries, managing appointments and the practitioner diary.
  • Providing assistance and herbal dispensary support to our team of practitioners.
  • Assisting with marketing, social media, reporting, inventory, system improvement and other tasks in conjunction with management and the clinic support team (training provided).
  • Keeping the beautiful space beautiful, tidy and in ship shape order.

Essential skills and attributes

  • You are proactive and take initiative to improve systems and processes.
  • Finesse with appointment scheduling and time management, as well as phone and customer service skills are second nature to you.
  • You are an articulate communicator with professional presentation.
  • You are calm and competent under stress and you take pride in your contribution to the team.

Preference will be given to applicants with highly tuned interpersonal skills, adaptability with various computer programs, point of sale experience and someone who is social media savvy and keen to contribute! Interest and experience in complementary medicine in a professional setting is highly regarded. A non-practicing naturopathic graduate or someone with previous medical or natural medicine clinic experience would be ideal.

This is an outstanding opportunity for someone with an interest in developing a successful career in the business, finance, administration and management side of natural medicine.

The available shifts range from Monday – Friday and every second Saturday. There is a 2 day shift minimum and you will need to be flexibly available to cover additional shifts along with your team members as each of you has holidays throughout each year.  Availability during school holidays is a must.

There are a number of development track possibilities for people interested in administrative and management career trajectories. Mention this in your cover letter if it is of interest.

To apply for a position on our Reception and Dispensing Team email a cover letter and resume to Directors, Charmaine and Carly, at management@fertileground.com.au.

Apply Now

Applications close Monday March 18 2024 and interviews with progressing applicants will be held between 22 – 28 March 2024. The successful candidate will begin the training period on Monday April 15 2024.

Rebuilding a Healthier World Together

Rebuild a healthier world

It’s time to rebuild a healthier world, starting with ourselves.

Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to be confronted by the magnitude of change needed to set the entire world on a healthier trajectory. It can feel quite out of our control and way bigger than ourselves and our choices – if we let it. But what if we all changed just a few of our daily habits – would this make a significant contribution to creating an even better world than before? 

Here at Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary – we think so.

I’m writing to you today to share some of the simple, powerful actions that we are taking on a daily basis at Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary to contribute to the whole. We’re always on a mission to change the way we do things around here for the better, so that we are actively and consciously rebuilding our healthy world with even more momentum.

A healthier world means healthier plants and animals, healthier people, healthier choices, healthier water, healthier food, healthier minds, healthy hearts and connections. 

We believe that every single system on this planet is intimately entwined with every other system – we all rely on each other. Right now the world is out of balance, unhealthy. We believe that a snowball of people taking positive and achievable daily actions towards healthy change personally and interpersonally can make a significant difference locally and globally.

  • We hope you feel good knowing that you’re using products and services from a team of people who are striving to make the world and its people healthier.
  • We hope that you LOVE the actions we are taking in our clinic and choose to feel inspired to take similar actions in your own life, home or place of work.
  • We hope that you feel moved enough by the wake-up call this crisis is giving us to go even another step further and inspire others to make healthier changes too.
What will you do with your daily power? Here’s what we’re doing with ours.

We’ve taken the phrase, ‘cleaning up our own backyard’, and applied it to an array of ways we do things in the clinic on a daily basis. By no means are we the be all and end all of gold star ecological magnificence, but we are dedicated to consistent improvement and actively pursuing more and more ways to create a more environmentally friendly clinic.

Our current daily power actions (at least the first 20 we could think of!) 
  1. We have moved our clinic banking to Bank Australia so that our funds support ethical causes in the world. The money in Bank Australia is never loaned to industries that do harm, such as coal, nuclear weapons, gambling, tobacco, or live animal export. They’re a carbon neutral business and offset the carbon emissions of all their car loans. Bank Australia also give 4% of their after-tax profit to projects that help people and the planet.
  2. Our stationery is printed on 100% recycled paper.
  3. We have moved a large amount of our practitioner clinical activity online as we move towards being paper-free.
  4. We use biodegradable and reusable ‘hero’ bags to post all of our prescriptions to patients – once received they can reuse the bag with a fancy inbuilt extra sticky strip. Hero bags are great!
  5. We use biodegradable bubble wrap, as well as recycled delivery boxes plus reuse the delivery material (bubble wrap) to encase delicate products that we ship to you in the post.
  6. We upcycle our product delivery boxes (and biodegradable potato starch packing pellets) to a local potter so Tara can ship her art, and to a local indoor plant specialist to help Hanora deliver her plants, and to anyone moving house (via the local Facebook Good Karma networks).
  7. For mass paper hand towel use due to COVID – we have 100% recycled biodegradable paper hand towels in all sinks and rooms. 
  8. We are using and selling face hand-made cotton face masks made by a Tibetan refugee friend of Fiona Harrison (our wonderful massage therapists/doula) and Jo Sharkey’s mum (Jo is one of our fabulous acupuncturists). 
  9. We use only Who Gives A Crap toilet paper throughout the clinic.
  10. We use biodegradable biobags for all our bins, which are separated into recycling and non-recycling.
  11. We separate soft plastics that we deposit to the soft plastic recycling depot at any  Woolworths or Coles via RedCycle.
  12. We are growing indoor plants in every room to purify the air, improve focus and creativity and bring some nature indoors.
  13. We have a worm farm from Ceres in which we put organic scraps and then use the worm juice and compost for our courtyard garden – check out The Compost Revolution for awesome discounts via your council too.
  14. We grow organic vegetables and bee attracting flowers in our courtyard garden, and have a bee and insect house on the wall from Bunnings we are hoping will populate this spring.
  15. We use bulk refills for our dishwashing liquid, laundry powder and soap throughout the clinic, our sanitiser and our COVID disinfectant spray, to reuse all the plastic squirt pumps instead of throwing them out and using more.
  16. We use eco-friendly low tox dishwashing machine powder, bought in bulk, and dishwashing liquid, also bought in bulk from the fabulous Building Biologist Nicole Bijlsma, creator of Abode cleaning products.
  17. We encourage our patients to eat chemical-free and organic produce as much as possible and endeavour to do this ourselves as well.
  18. We have built-in twin-undersink water filters in the dispensary and kitchen as well as Zazen drinking and shower water filters  – there are no bottles of water here. If you’re interested to get a Zazen filter be sure to email one of our practitioners – Carly Woods – as she has access to them for a cheaper price. Email carly@fertileground.com.au. 
  19. Many of our practitioners choose to cycle or walk to work – which we heartily support and love.
  20. We walk or cycle our daily prescription postage to the local Australia Post branch.

Phew! That’s A LOT of positive action! And I am sure there is more I could think of if I had more time.

There are many more ways we can improve our action taking for a healthier earth and we are on a mission to do better. If you see something you think we could do better, we are always open to your feedback and welcome your fresh eyes and insight.

If you’re a part of Fertile Ground or The Melbourne Apothecary in any way, or even if you’ve just stumbled across us and landed here reading this – we’re grateful. We’re grateful that you’ve taken steps, whether large or small, to integrate even more holistic care into your life. As you take proactive steps like this to nourish yourself, your family and the planet so too will your action inspire others. Healthy people make healthy decisions. What a beautiful world we can create together. Thank you.

Written by Charmaine Dennis (Founding Director and Naturopath) on behalf of the entire wonderful team at Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary

Movement with AbunDance

Movement with AbunDance - Katy Woods
Why AbunDance?

I have always been a fan of moving. I dance when I’m happy, stressed, blissfully confused. I dance out the whole rainbow spectrum of emotion that moves through my body. Free flowing movement gets what is on the inside, out.

When I move, my feelings and thoughts become more tangible, malleable almost. There, in movement, I can choose to literally shape my thoughts and feelings, or purely bear witness to them. To me this shapes potent self connection. This kind of communication to self (and to others beyond words) is aaaaaDictive, extraordinarily humbling and honestly, necessary.

Please, do what you came to do in this life, and dance.

In my youth dancing was an activity like any other sport. So I danced. I grew my foundation, I delighted, I performed. However, the more I craved new ways of moving the more I understood I had only dipped my young toes into the pond of possibility.

There is a Story. Creativity. Connection.

These aspects of movement – they are an ocean. I will always be grateful for my greatest teacher and friend, Kirsty Lee, who nurtured these aspects of dance in my forming years as it has guided much of the joy in my life. I grew my practice, diversified, experimented, listened, watched, felt, made contemporary works, joined contact jams, fused disciplines, spoke for artist circles, trained and performed internationally … and in all that I came to know what I wanted to share – I wanted to facilitate this profoundly connective movement in others.

And so I began facilitating. The more I taught, the deeper I too understood, felt and connected with myself and others. I have a fond memory of directing a dancework named THREADS – this was a site specific performance that considered how a thread could imbue memory, attitude and relationship.

By night I would gather with my gaggle of wonderful movement loving women inside a friendly and eccentric Op-shop in town. Here I explored ideas, created tasks, collaborated and blended together a string of thought in movement (occasionally interrupted by a frenzy of op-shop treasure hunting, of course). It was a space and project where the process was joy and the product was a bonus.

The pure juice of creativity is in the process; it’s in the making and the maintaining. It’s playful, vulnerable and thrilling.

Now, bringing all of this experience, play and creativity together I have created AbunDance.

Abundance is a series of dance workshops that uses grounded contemporary technique, curiosity, improvisation and wholesome conditioning to fuel the sense of embodied feminine.

I offer this series exclusively to Fertile Ground and The Melbourne Apothecary, to the mothers and the mothers to be, to join me in opening to, generating and maintaining your sense of feminine sensual movement. This is about confidence. This is about play. This is about curiosity and moving even more into connection with your body and mind.

AbunDance is a community where you can nurture your capacity to connect, where you can develop a practice of dedication to yourself and all that you are as a woman.

Katy Woods is a professional dancer, group facilitator and dance teacher. She loves developing classes that initiate and sustain the love of movement for others.  to access her current class series – AbunDance. Katy is offering your first class for free.

Find out more and register here

Osteopath practice opportunity

osteopathy cranial

Fertile Ground Health Group (FGHG) is a multidisciplinary, natural medicine practice with expertise in preconception, infertility, pregnancy and family health. We are currently seeking an experienced Osteopath with a desire to develop their career and work with other high achievers in a vibrant, professional team. If you can start in August, we have a waiting list of patients ready for you!

We are ideally looking for a dedicated professional with special interest and experience in treating pre and post-natal women, newborn babes and children.  A minimum of 3-5 years’ experience as an Osteopath working with pregnancy is an absolute necessity and additional training in this area, as well as treating babies will be highly regarded.

We are also very interested in applications for an enthusiastic osteopath who treats men and women generally (without experience in babies and children necessarily) and we encourage you to apply also as we grow our physical therapy team. We have plenty of patients with pain who need your confident expertise and hands-on therapy too!

You will also want to actively raise your own profile amongst your peers, medical specialists and other important referrers as well as share your expertise with our patient base through blogs, podcasts and/or social media. Your ability to collaborate with other practitioners, coupled with confidence in communication with and presenting to medical specialists and other primary health carers will be highly regarded.

Starting immediately, FGHG has room for a practitioner doing at least 2-3 days per week including valuable Saturdays. Our current osteopath Andrew Nguyen and his partner are moving back to Tasmania to start a family of their own leaving a gap ready to fill. To apply please email a covering letter and resume to Monique Bevan at management@fertileground.com.au. Apply ASAP.