anyone in australia feels that we're not learning enough?

[GE90]

Any of you have the feeling that universities here focus too much on theories rather than actually teaching us some real stuff about nursing? Also compare to other countries, we only need to spend 3yrs at school. Moreover we do much less courses than students from other countries...

[Fiona59]

I'm not saying we Australians are bad nurses, I'm just saying the education is below that of other countries in terms of clinical hours, pre requisite courses.

I'm Canadian and have worked with a few NZ and Australian nurses over the years. They are not badly prepared but have a different approach to nursing than Canadians and Americans.

We have exactly the same argument about degree educated nurses here. I'm an LPN (your EN). I did a two year college level course. It used to be the two year diploma RN course. What we are seeing over here is academically bright people going into nursing because they saw it as a guaranteed job. Many have poor interpersonal skills, lack common sense and have an aversion to bodily fluids.

Why they thought they'd be a good fit for nursing is anyone's guess. I work with some fabulous degree holders who wanted to be nurses, who didn't come as second degree nurses because IT or education degrees were basically worthless due to over supply in those fields.

My hospital used to have a hospital training programme and in all honesty many are wishing it had never been let go.