Nursing prac

I know what you all go through and yes its tough. Its worse if you have to live out of home and you get no financial support from your family and have to rely on the government to help JUST pay the bills and rent let alone have a life.

I would suggest that you work as much as you can when you arent doing prac and then take time off from prac coz you will get tired. I just graduated from QUT (malenurse,-i hope at your graduation you dont have the exectuive director of nursing or whatever her role at the RBH is as your guest speaker coz she just droned on and on forever) and during the prac i just found myself too tired to work on weekeds.

Though remember in final semester, you only have your elective and profesional development (ewk) to do along with prac, so you wont spend most of your time at uni then. Most of the electives are easy and external, though you may have to go in for the odd class. In effect you are only at uni for like 5wks in teh final semester.

If you want any help about QUT stuff, just drop me a line at rozymisty@yahoo.com.au And you do know that the final semester of prac is broken up into two lots dont you?

Numerous students in my class were complaining about not working and that if they just paid us even $5 an hr or something that would be beter than nothing!

I definitely agree with that...even a small amount of $5/hr would help. My partner's income is enough to rule us out of government assistance, but not enough that I can't not work. So last year I found myself on prac at the hospital I work at (different ward though); in week 1 I'd be a student for 8 hours, then switch clothes and be an AIN for 6 hours, and in week 2 visa versa....needless to say I was exhausted by the end.

My situation got considerably worse mid 2nd semester as I had a motorcycle accident which put me out of commission for some time. I was able to drop 1 subject back to 3rd year(which means I’ll have a full load in 2nd semester this year), and I caught up enough in the other 3 subjects to just scrape through. But after that experience, I feel qualified to talk about financial hardship.

And by the way Liz, 1 of the 4 grads who have just started on my ward went to QUT, and also spoke of that speaker you mentioned at the grad ceremony ;-) …and thanks for that offer of help…I may take it up.

"What ward do you work on, and which hospital?

If you do your prac at Ipswich Hospital, you can stay in the nurses quarters for a $20 refundable key deposit which is very good. Thats what i had to do when i did my first prac, coz i dont have a car, and it was too hard for mum to drive me back and forth or get the train, esp at night..scary place lol. It would be great if more hospitals still had nurses quarters. At the RBH they still have the old quarters there, where mum did her training lol, but its just sitting there not being used. Of course the rural and remote places will have accomodation."

I work on 5C at the Wesley, which is a really nice place to work but its a long drive from my place (35 min south), but I try and get my placements ther so I can work before or after as I outlined above. I am about to find out today where my next placement will be (4 week block...my preferences are the Wesley, RBH and Ipswich, in that order and all peri-op). No garentee that we'll get any of our preferences though. Yesterday we were given another option for prac which is similar to what UQ offer. Instead of block placement, there will be 33 positions at the Mater for this years prac (CP4 & CP5), a couple of shifts per week which you negotiate with the NUM's of each department as you rotate through various areas of there various hospitals, doing various shifts...early/late/night/8hr/12hr...etc. Sounds quite exciting, and I will apply.

What Uni are you attending??

ACU and UQ seem to all have good prac systems. I was talking to the CN on our ward who has taken on some ACU ple and they do like nurse shifts, ie wknds, nights etc etc to get a proper feel for the profession. Great idea, but should get paid for it.

What type of ward is 5C?

Hi, I'm UQ and doing my pracs (all of them) at the Mater, I don't get a choice but think I'm at a fantastic teaching hospital anyway. In the final year its all clinical. I travel from Ipswich, and when doing a late shift I stay in a hotel over night. I really don't know how I'm going to manage that last year when doing late shift, I also have a husband and young children. At the moment I'm taking it one semester at a time, it also helps that I had a great instructer last semester.