DEFENCE FAMILY BUSINESS AWARD FINALIST
Penny’s nursing experience and passion to help parents take a proactive approach to their child's health drove her to create Sick Happens.
Sick Happens educates parents on managing everyday childhood illnesses through comprehensive, easy-to-understand online courses and product. Unlike first aid courses focus on emergencies, Sick Happens teaches parents to critically assess their child’s symptoms, manage illnesses safely at home, and identify red flags that indicate the need for medical attention.
By choosing to educate online, Penny can reach parents locally and globally. This is particularly beneficial for rural or remote families or those without a nearby support system, such as families with deployed partners orthose living away from family due to postings.
Meet Penny
Everyone needs that friend they can call at 3am.
That one who has all the good advice when your baby has a fever and you don’t know if you should cuddle them or rush them to hospital.
For thousands, Penny Blunden is that friend.
At 38-years-old, Penny is a paediatric nurse, the mum of two boys and the wife of a Royal Australian Air Force veteran.
She is also the founder and director of Sick Happens, an online education business.
“I teach parents what to do when their kids are sick, so they feel more in control and less freaked out when it inevitably happens,” Penny said.
“They also get access to me in a private forum where they can ask questions.”
The idea for Sick Happens came from Penny’s years working as a paediatric nurse, seeing parents bringing children into emergency when they didn’t need too or bringing children in later than they should.
She realised there was a huge need for parents to be educated before their child was sick and have access to resources when they were in the midst of overwhelm and panic.
So Sick Happens happened.
Penny was able to draw on her master’s in nursing, 15 years of working in paediatrics and experience gained, in a roundabout way, courtesy of the RAAF, to create the business.
“Thankfully, with defence, we moved around heaps, so I've got lots of different areas of clinical experience,” she said.
Sick Happens launched in 2019 but the Covid pandemic meant it quickly shifted from the idea of face-to-face workshops to online.
It was a move that ended up being perfect for the business.
“Parents don't have the time for face-to-face workshops but, with online courses, they can watch it in their jammies or in the middle of the night when their child's got a fever,” Penny said.
While building her business, Penny was also growing a social media following to 170,000 followers on Instagram and a few thousand more across Facebook and TikTok.
“Pre-covid times, there wasn't a lot of health information (on social media),” she said.
“There was a lot of influencer health information, but not evidence based."
“So, it was very important that I was there.”
Penny said she was worried her peers in the medical industry would think she was trying to be an influencer rather than an educator. But now, she has GPs and paediatricians recommending Sick Happens to their patients.
“That's been the biggest success for me,” she said.
Penny’s clients and followers are spread across Australia and even overseas, with more than a few defence families amongst their numbers.
“Not everyone knows that we’re an ex-military family, it's not something that I necessarily promote, but whenever I do talk about it, I get these little waves of people going, oh, she gets it,” she said.
“It’s that comfort in knowing that I totally get where they're coming from, and I can help in some way.”
Penny said it was amazing to be a finalist in the Defence Family Business category of The King’s Trust Beyond Service Awards 2024.
“When you work on your own all of the time, you never really know if what you're doing is right or beneficial,” she said.
“To be a finalist, it's that nice little word of affirmation of, yes, you're doing a good job.”
Take a look at Sick Happen's website
