Preston Northcote

Can we consider a few pressing and urgent trends in nursing in Australia at present ? Firstly the undergraduate degree is so weak and mild in terms of applied science , now its a bachelor of nursing and far removed from the rigiour of a bachelor of applied science that our counterparts study. undergraduate nurses are considered a bit childish and not quite the real deal. A bit of a micky mouse degree if you will. virtually anyone can get into a nursing degree ( charles sturt university for example) and believe me - the RN's ive had to work with during the past years have been dodge dodge dodgy ! and embarrassing to say the least. Secondly after completing a masters degree and working in some of the best units in australia i can say the nurisng has been sold out to the allied health team who basically the RNs carry out their orders on a daily basis. most of our autonomous clinical nursing decisions have been taken away and you basically cant even get a patient out of bed without running it past a physio and then an OT and f... knows who else. Its a joke really. Our nursing leaders have been really **** weak and if i had my time over again i would have devoted my energies into nurisng leadership to change some of the trends that have occurred during the last 10 years. Im apalled at my career choice now, however i have had some fantastic times in the profession but sadly it is diminishing greatly. Many other professions are more attractive at the moment and you can use your degree to do a grad masters in another profession and use the nursing degree as a stepping stone. I would like to challenge the nursing leaders of the last 10 years and tell them they have lost the package and let us new generation down its too much hard work to change what they should have been looking after. They have failed to protect the integrity of profession and now we truely are handmaidens both to the allied health sciences and to the medical profession. I challenge the 'nursing academics' and the 'nursing leaders' to a debate.