greet n meet/cheese n wine

Nurse Kat · Jan 31, 2003

Hi fellow Aussies!

My name is Kat and I graduated last year from Deakin Uni. My grad year starts in March at one of Melb's major hospitals and I'm rotating through resp/gen med and urology/vasc. I do kind of feel ready to start and I know there will be plenty of support where I'm working which is why it was my first preference! Can't wait to earn some money but until then I will enjoy the beaches as I can't afford to do anything else!!!

mageean · Jan 31, 2003

Hi all. Although not an Aussie I have some friends in Brisbane. I also agree strongly with Grace's view re Hospital based training. it gives a better all round experience and a higher degree of "on the job supervision"

By the way, can you teach us Brits how to play our national game i.e Cricket!!

OzNurse69 · Jan 31, 2003

Originally posted by mageean
By the way, can you teach us Brits how to play our national game i.e Cricket!!

Hi mageean, & welcome to our little antipodean corner of the board. But, I thought we'd already given you a pretty good cricket lesson over the past few months.....!!

mageean · Jan 31, 2003

Problem is Oznurse69, we dont learn from our mistakes but it gives some overpaid guys a 3 month holiday in Aussie. maybe i should take up cricket instead of nursing.

frannybee · Feb 2, 2003

G'day all!

I'm Fran, 25yo who finished my training at QUT on 2/12/00, got my QNC RN badge on 5/12/00 and flew out to the UK to meet my fella on 9/12/00. Bloody men, eh?

Spent the first 8 months of my life in the UK working as a bum-wiper in Canterbury, Kent doing the adaptation placement the UKCC demanded I do (coz the nursing and language in Australia are sooooo different from the UK). Got paid less there as a 'trainee nurse' than I had been getting paid as an AIN in Brisvegas before I qualified, even after the conversion rate!

Moved to Yorkshire (again following my man) and started working for an agency which I loved. Firstpoint Healthcare do UK/Aus exchanges and placements, if anyone's interested! Did two long-term placements in Neurosurg ITU/HDU and Surgical OPD. Was offered permanent posts on both units but loved the agency life too much.

Sadly had to leave Sheffield to follow my bloke to Swansea in Wales for him to get enough visa points for us to both come back to Australia. Am now working fulltime as a D-grade (level 1) RGN on a very busy Haematology/Medical ward. Had to get a 'proper' job to stay in the UK - 2 years here goes so quickly! My ward overlooks the sea and I watch the Swansea/Cork ferry makes its way across the Irish Sea every morning. I get to see the sun come up as I do the pill round, makes life seem so much more bearable.

Not married yet, no kids of my own but I dote on my 2yo nephew who is being raised by my parents in Qld. Am desperately homesick now, not really for Oz as such, more having my family around me. My best friend is a nurse from Adelaide working in Sheffield. Any Aussies living in the UK - drop me a line, Mahlah and I would love to invite you to a Barbie and Bundy night (yes, we have a stash of the good stuff!)

Happy Australia Day all, we did you proud

Fran

Tookie · Feb 4, 2003

Hello to Sehbar, Nurse Kat, Mageean and frennybee

Great to see you posting tell your frinends get them to to bring their thoughts and opinions (we lot down under are good at opinions)

I have the wine and cheese set out - seems that l am eating it all on my own never mind maybe we can work on a get to gether in some way at some time - after all we are a bigh country and a grat one --- oopps let my prejuidice in there then

Grace Oz · Feb 5, 2003

G'day Fran...

Hope you get to come home soon. Must be bloody cold over there in Pommie land??!!!

Sounds as though you've had a good look around the place & some wide experience. you'll have NO probs getting a job once you get home!...

Glad also that you did us & yourself proud by celebrating Australia Day in the true Aussie tradition & spirit!! LOL

Cheers,

Grace

frannybee · Feb 5, 2003

Cheers, Grace! It's freezing here this evening and we're expecting snow again. I'll have to console myself by having another dark choc Tim Tam (thanks, Mahlah!) and doing another Taebo workout before bed.

leprecaun · Feb 8, 2003

Hi - I found this site today when surfing looking for some info, Aussie nurse, trained at Royal Brisbane Hospital, many many moons ago under the old system, long hours, in desolute wards with archaic conditions, and time consuming useless jobs, such as counting all crockery and cutlery / silverware, thermometers etc before going off duty and if you were not organised and went past your scheduled departure time overtime was not heard of. As a result we all learnt to be very efficient and organised in all aspects of our lives, army like and regimented but we did it and heaven forbid if we got caught cheating and just signing the book, sure enough that would be the time when something would have been slipped in or out and your count would not be correct, this necessitated a memo to the matron in triplicate in your best handwriting. Uniforms were gross and those stiffened flimsy muslin veils (which had to be folded into a multitude of folds precisely), which collapsed in the humidity and steam of old fashioned autoclaves on the wards and pan hoppers , then it was a further triplicate memo to matron to explain why your uniform standard had dropped. All this in four years of slogging to be granted registration as a staff nurse for another year before being allowed to actually practice unsupervised. Oh and yes marriage was forbidden, body peircings were not heard of in young ladies and if you did happen to have the old peirced ears these were to be removed on duty. nails were inspected regularly for set length and cleanliness. Hair was always fully covered by the caps / veils and that was never questioned. I often reflect and ask myself how i managed to last the three years which i ended up doing when through hard fought for lobbying reduced a 4 year sentence to a 3 yr one, I came out much better for this rigourous ordeal and was transformed from a immature 17yr old to a fairly experienced efficient (in my opinion) 21yr old when i was finished as a staff nurse (equiv to todays graduate year). I worked for a further 15years in peadiatrics seeing many changes take place including married nurses, uniform changes, piercings and long loose hair. I also saw the beginnings of a change to Uni trained nurses and not that these students were on the wards then but i often wonder if all these changes in uniform and appearance and general move away from the strict discipline i understood contributed to the beginnings of the now rampant MRSA within the hospitals. I shudder every time i go to work and see nurses with 1"long finger nails ( false or otherwise), painted and manicured, they pop through the flimsy gloves and harbour all sorts of nasties, not to mention the skin tears i have seen occur when clients are being attended. Even witnessed one fall off in a patients wound!!!!! I have had a variety of experience in many areas over the last 30 years including being a parent and on the receiving end of the stick when my children needed hospital and i myself underwent serious surgery. I became dissalusioned with the move towards more paper pushing and less client orientated care, especially in my recent aged care stint. I went back to uni and this time did a bachelor of education, went forth and taught primary school, now i do both, work 6 days a fortnight at a major private hospital in a busy acute/chronic medical ward, and work as a supply teacher in various local schools. This year i have decided to go back to uni to complete my bachelor of nursing post registration, this will enable me to further my career prospects and also give me an opportunity to have and inside veiw point albeit limited as a hospital trained nurse experiencing communication at grass roots level with about to become registered nurses. I am very biased i firmly beleive nursing needs to be brought back to hospital wards, and i feel the one hospital in Canberra doing the pilot study is to be congratulated for taking this brave step, but i think we need at least 20 hospitals throughout Australia trialling the return to hospital training with limited uni contact, this would give a better overall picture. The other area that has seen the demise of nursing availability is the agency system, many nurses work agency getting double / treble what permanent staff get and have flexibility in their lives this is great, but problem is while there are hundreds of nursing agencies out there offering these deals then the hospitals remain understaffed as they cant increase salaries or meet patient care levels when they have to employ agency staff every shift every day to cover the shortages and budgets only go so far, therefore the regular staff are penalised with terrible pay and terrible shifts, what would happen if we all went agency!!!, or worse still we all left nursing?

Tookie · Feb 8, 2003

Lepracuan

Glad to see your post

I trained around the same time graduated in 1972 from the PAH at the gabba

Did my Ped posting at RBH

So glad to hear that your doing your post reg training did mine while back after l did my post grad in Gerontology -

Please keep posting and keep bring your thoughts - I to think that l would like to see a combination of the old and the new - There is so much more technolgy that the new have to learn and they dont get enought time to have really out on the floor to be really put into practice what they need to know - It frustrated me at times the managment skills of RN's often our age who find it so hard to manage staff issues as so much of their time is now spent on other areas - often the real nursing gets lost

The other sady thing to me in many ways is the way we have lost what were nursing skills and they are now other professions.

Glad you posting

Tookie

OzNurse69 · Feb 8, 2003

Originally posted by leprecaun
what would happen if we all went agency!!!?

Short answer (from an agency nurse!!) -- We would all be finally paid what we deserved!!!:)

bewbew · Feb 8, 2003

originally posted by Lepracuan
I am very biased i firmly beleive nursing needs to be brought back to hospital wards, and i feel the one hospital in Canberra doing the pilot study is to be congratulated for taking this brave step, but i think we need at least 20 hospitals throughout Australia trialling the return to hospital training with limited uni contact, this would give a better overall picture.

What is the name of the Canberra Hospital?