Graduates take care of extra nursing numbers

ORANGE Base Hospital's nursing staff levels are boosted with the announcement yesterday of 19 new graduate nurses for the hospital.

The nurses are part of a record 1618 entering the NSW Hospital system this month across the state.

One of the graduates Donna Gosper has gained her degree after being an enrolled nurse and working permanent part-time while juggling family life with two children and her university study commitments.

“Training this way has given me a lot of flexibility," she said.

“I really like working with aged care and palliative care patients and their families. Its a nice feeling to go home at the end of the day knowing you've helped someone."

Husband and wife graduates Matthew Rowe and Becky Dixon were both working as operating theatre technicians in Melbourne when they decided to become nurses and moved to the area to train at Charles Sturt University.

“I came up for a prac (internship) at Orange Base Hospital and really liked it,” Mr Rowe said.

With a special interest in mental health nursing as well, he says he is looking forward to the building of the new hospital at Bloomfield where services will be more integrated.

Emily Laszuk and Jane Bray both trained as nurses under a scholarship scheme with a $10,000 a year grant helping them through their studies.

“It made such a difference,” Ms Laszuk said.

“I think the system we have here in Orange too, where you can rotate around the wards more frequently, is a much better system when you are training."

Orange Base Hospital has a nursing staff of 300 working a full-time/casual shift roster.

In 2006/2007 the State Government undertook a $1.8 million campaign to try and encourage young people to pursue a career in nursing to help address chronic shortages in the industry.

The success of that campaign will not be measured for another three years.

Nursing shortages remain an issue across Australia, and yesterday the Iemma Government announced more than 750 enrolled nurses had been offered jobs in the public sector.

Mr Iemma said the government had also launched a new program to offer 200 scholarships over the next four years to help enrolled nurses train to become registered nurses.

Half of the state's new nursing graduates have been allocated to Sydney's large teaching hospitals.

Royal North Shore has topped the allocation list and will receive 128 nurses, with Westmead coming in second with 102 new nurses.

By Janice Harris

Article from http://orange.yourguide.com.au