Latest Nursing News

Nurses could take strike action, over concerns about 'ramping' at the Flinders Medical Centre.  It's after the Nursing Federation claimed more patients had to be treated in the back of ambulances on the weekend, because there were no beds free in the emergency department.

A request for data on nursing levels at the Berri Hospital has been refused prompting South Australia's nursing federation to be "deeply suspicious" of whether minimum requirements have been met.

Nurses are experiencing “off the Richter scale” distress as Queensland Health boards look for savings, including efficiencies worth $40 million in Brisbane Metro South, their union says.  Health Minister Lawrence Springborg this month announced plans to reduce 1537 positions from Queensland's 17 Hospital and Health Services, the regions now controlled by boards that run hospitals and services across the state.

THE NSW nurses and midwives union has apologised for the profession's part in the forced adoption policy that took children from mothers for decades.

This story of one woman's nursing career is an entertaining and funny read, due to both the choice of content and the humorous writing style. [book review]

Oncology nurse Maria Boland has always put the needs of her breast cancer patients’ first – even when Maria was also diagnosed with the life-changing disease. Maria, who is originally from Cooma in New South Wales, has spent more than 20 years working to assist cancer patients and for the past five years has been the breast cancer coordinator and clinical nurse consultant at Queensland’s Redcliffe Hospital.

Former NSWNA president Jennifer Collins visited the grave of the only nurse buried at the end of the Kokoda Track.

Australia has a strong reliance on overseas trained doctors with most of them coming from the UK followed by those from India and Malaysia. A new report into the need for doctors in the country from Health Workforce Australia, says that figures show that in 2009, a quarter, some 18,458 working doctors in the country obtained their first medical qualification overseas.

Victoria’s largest in-home nursing service is trialling a new system to identify people who show signs of developing cognitive decline earlier, and put in place clinical interventions before a diagnosis of dementia has been made by a doctor.

Complex surgery for rare cancers should be consolidated into specialised units to improve survival rates, the NSW peak cancer control agency has said. Data from the Cancer Institute NSW has demonstrated an association between hospitals conducting very small numbers of procedures and poorer rates of survival.