imaginations

I work in paeds onc. We tell all our parents, including parents going to transplant/BMT that their parenting style should not be altered by their child's diagnosis or treatment and that they should continue to enforce their usual limits and boundarie...

I have also worked at Sydney Kids (in areas you expressed interest in). Would be happy to answer questions via PM.

Have you thought about volunteering as an RN with St. Johns Ambulance? This will give you the opportunity to learn and practice skills in first response and emergency care as an RN and network with health professionals from a variety of backgrounds. ...

There are a lot of Kiwi nurses who do grad programs in Australia (there were two in mine and at least one in the year before me). However I have a feeling it is more complex in the reverse. Good luck!

You should be able to find this information on each hospital's website. The process in Victoria might have changed since I was a grad and it isn't impossible that you have to go through the Matching process for some private providers (particularly so...

I recently contacted Nursing Network Agency to enquire about a position advertised on the MyCareer website and was not impressed by their recruitment staff at all. The woman I spoke with was rude, not clear about specifications and requirements for t...

My interview was several years ago now and is blurred in my memory with a very similar interview I did in third year for an AIN position in the same facility. There were six questions (I believe this was standard then, I don't know how the process ha...

You need to do your research. Find out the names of hospitals, get on their websites and research their graduate programs. You need to be proactive in the competitive employment environment that is graduate nursing in Australia. Victoria is a hard ma...

Your university should be able to provide you with practice questions (there is a common scheme and format of the questions asked across NSW Health) and a general guide to answering them. Practice practice practice your answers and have responses pre...

First off, it sounds like your orientation was lacking. As a new grad I had two weeks supernumerary on my first rotation and six weeks on my second rotation (though this was in a critical care area, new grads rotating to other wards had another week ...

You need to consider what you want from a graduate program and do your research. Is a big hospital with a lot of complex cases, rare diseases or trauma important for you? Find out what hospitals tend to deal with those patients. Do you want to work i...

This situation is particularly bad in Queensland given the current political environment and the major public service cuts. If you haven't seen what is happening between the Newman government and the medical fraternity in QLD and are wanting to work ...

I'm a new grad nurse in my seventh month. I spent six months on the ward before moving to the ICU where I have been for a month now. On my very first day on the ward as a registered nurse I met a month old baby and her family. The baby was known to ...

I would stay in ICU, hands down. Especially if the acuity and/or census if often low and there is competition to actually get a sick patient. 6 months is nowhere near enough to have have ICU down to a tee. If you like it, then stay!

Hi All, I completed my new graduate year as an RN at a tertiary children's hospital (five months on a speciality ward and seven months in the ICU - where we cared for newborns through to teens). At the termination of the graduate program I was offere...

Hi All, I know that to become registered in the United States nurses are required to have completed a certain number of hours in midwifery/labor and delivery. I was wondering if this requirement is the same in Canada? In Australia, midwifery (or L&a...

No, it's not. I know plenty of RNs who've gone to medical school. Point is, they didn't expect - or get - credit or recognition of prior learning for being an RN. Everyone comes in from scratch. The reality is - being a doctor is nothing like being a...

This is the day-to-day woe of most nurses in my PICU more often than not. We are often described as more of an HDU than an ICU, simply because we typically have more stable patients that unstable or intubated patients. I could go on for hours about t...

There is no credit for prior learning in medicine in Australia. You must complete the entire course or you will not be eligible for registration with APHRA as an intern at the completion of your degree (because your degree will not be complete). Try...

I encountered a similar, though not the same situation, last night. A bigger patient (14 year old, 60kg) 20+ days post BMT in renal + respiratory failure. Previous issues with hypertension (preceding transplant and renal failure). Intubated + ventila...

In Australia you do not get to skip a year of medical school because you are an RN. You need to take the GAMSAT, have an adequate undergraduate GPA, make the cut off for interview, get through the interview process and be offered a place in medical s...

I don't work in paeds neuro ICU but I worked in paeds neuro/neuro surg for a while and my current PICU gets a lot of neuro kids. How long will patient's be staying in your unit? I guess one thing that we find in our experience with neuro kids is that...

My local area is having an enterovirus 71 public health crisis at the moment. The symptoms sounds very familiar.

We run our art lines on Alaris GH syringe drivers. We take a discard from the transducer port. We bleed the line back to the transducer until we get 1-2mls frank blood in the syringe (2-3ml of hep saline should bleed back before you get frank blood) ...

I'm very curious (as a new ICU nurse) as to why this is an exclusion criteria?