hello this is relating to nursing in Australia and a bit of my story. The worldwide depression has hit Australia slightly hard, so while this GFC has not hurt Australia or nursing as bad as other industries. I really need to tell other nurses what its like as a new grad in Australia (Oct 2012). The depression has resulted in health cutbacks so some EXPERIENCED nurses have been let go. This means that there is no place for new grads in Australia and my guess is each new grad training position possibly has 10-20 appling for that one position. I am 49 year old male, grad RN last year; i have 20+ years as Advanced Care city paramedic and worked in health care my whole life. This means i have some 50,000 hours of health experience or maybe closer to 75,000 hours. But employers always respond with we require one year of post grad experience, so require 2 years or 3 years. What this means to you, especially if you are overseas; stay there :) (do not come here and take my jobs lol) seriously employers here can afford to be picky when choosing new staff. So they want clean presentable babies who smell clean instead of a fat, bald old man (i am being a bit unfair to myself). Personally a lot of Asian nurses work here and are awesome nurses with the only exception they do have trouble speaking the language. This would cause some employers to be more reluctant to employ some nurses due to this issue. So if you have trouble writing reading or speaking English PRACTICE, avoid speaking your native language unless you have to. practice by finding people in real life or on skype; whatever you must do. But get it set for your future career. If you are Asian, USA or UK seriously you are in for a lot of shocks here and a lot of adventures. You will get out of it what you put in. DO NOT even consider going remote nursing it is a very different world. make sure you research remote nursing well; and then forget it. rural nursing might be ok if you come from a small place but these places have less than 10,000 and most of those people are not all in the "towns". Your visas will take months to years and you will need assistance here or a lot of money behind you so start that searching now. If you have awesome experience you probably will need one year of experience to land an interview. Otherwise 2 or 3 years. So stay away from Australia or truly get organised, find whatever work you can land at home or in Australia and remember your dream of being a nurse might take a lot longer, but persevere and you will get there after a long expensive journey. So keep trying and fight for your career or give up now and stay home. (just kidding) good luck...
