Latest Nursing News

Mental health nurses at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital are on the brink of a walkout because of a dispute about staffing levels.

THERE are about 270,000 nurses working in Australia, but little is known about their health and wellbeing and how it can impact patient care. That is about to change with researchers from Southern Cross University encouraging registered and enrolled nurses to participate in a survey that has just been released.

Jane Thompson says her life has been reduced to 49 minutes.  In that space of time, three children can lose a mother, a husband can lose a wife and a nurse can find herself publicly blamed for the whole lot, in a case that became a cause celebre for stretched hospital resources.

The Swifts Creek Bush Nursing Centre has started using a teleconferencing facility that will enable the community to connect with health professionals, colleagues and conferences hundreds of kilometres away. The facility was set up with some of the $20,000 of Government funding given to the centre earlier this year. ^[+audio]

MENTAL health nurses at the Royal Children's Hospital are threatening to walk off the job over a staffing dispute with management that follows a string of assaults.  The two unions representing mental health nurses at the new $1 billion hospital say adolescent inpatients have attacked several nurses this year. Some have allegedly been kicked and punched and attacked with four inch nails, the Australian Nursing Federation says.

Robin Tchernomoroff and Kaye Knight were working in nurse education when they realised rural and remote areas faced an uphill battle to access education.

The New South Wales Nurses Association says it will cost less than $15,000 a year to settle a dispute over staffing numbers at the Cobar hospital.  The nurses closed several of the hospital's acute beds last month, saying they were unable to care for both in-patients and respond to emergency situations.

KINGAROY Town Hall was a scene of protest as ministers arrived for the state cabinet meeting.  The Queensland Nurses' Union was on the frontline yesterday after it was announced Kingaroy's Farr Home aged-care facility would be closing.

DUBBO has a new team of health care professionals, devoted to keeping elderly and disabled residents at home in their community.  The team at Caring For You (CFU) Nursing Service Pty. Limited has a mission to improve the health outcomes and quality of life for their clients. They aim to assist them in maintaining independent living in their own homes.

Nurses have backed the Federal Government’s tough new anti-smoking advertising campaign targeting pregnant women and Indigenous communities.