NEED HELP....volunteer hospital experience

[careforpeople]

Hi to all.I am a registered nurse here in the Philippines. Currently, I am working as a volunteer nurse in a secondary hospital here in our city. It is difficult for us to find work as a paid nurse staff because of the outflow of nurses in our city with only few hospitals around. My concern is that, will my work experience as a volunteer nurse (that would mean i am not a paid nurse, no payslips, but only certificate of volunteer nursing experience is given after the end of our contract as a volunteer nurse in the said institution) be accepted by employers in South Australia? Or hospitals in South Australia do really require applicants to have a background of hospital experience as a paid staff nurse?Please help me in my concern...Thanks so much for giving time to answer my question....thanks so much.

[talaxandra]

I have no direct knowledge to base this on, but suspect your experience would need to be as an employee to count - volunteers are usually treated differently than staff, and these ares of difference are likely to be the kinds of things future employers need to see: goals, clinical progress, appraisals, in-service attendance, problem solving etc.

In addition, the sense of responsibility and accountability that is part of working as a nurse is missing if you are not taking care of the patient as an employee.

And unless things are really, really different between our hospitals and yours, there should be fundamentally different tasks and roles played by employed nurses and volunteers.

Your best way of finding out for sure, though, is to contact the SA Board. Good luck