HEALTH
Student nurse Kathleen Berry says completing placements in settings such as aged care and mental health has helped allay the trepidation she had about becoming an endorsed enrolled nurse.
With the accumulation of practical experience, the mature-age student says it becomes easier to conceive of herself as a nurse of the future.
"Once you do your first lot of placements you start to really see what it's about," says Berry. "You really get to find out what areas you like and what areas you don't like.
"Doing the placements is what helps you decide where you want to eventually end up." As a future endorsed enrolled nurse, Berry belongs to one of a range of nursing categories in Australia that includes enrolled nurses, registered nurses, assistants in nursing and nurse practitioners.
Endorsed enrolled nurses, who undertake medication endorsement that extends beyond the diploma qualification enrolled nurses complete, are authorised to administer a variety of medications to patients under the guidance of a registered nurse and they provide nursing care including observations, personal care assistance, patient feeding and assistance in first aid and emergency situations.
Berry, who is completing a diploma of nursing through vocational education and training organisation Partners in Training, says she divides her time between attending classes, self-directed learning and assignments and her placements.
She says she's most conscious of all she's absorbing when it's time to put it into practice.
"While you're learning in the classroom, sometimes you have self-doubt," says Berry. "You wonder, 'Oh, am I retaining this information? Am I remembering everything? How am I going to remember everything when I get on the ward?' "But once you go and do your placement, you're surprised at how much you have retained." Berry, also an experienced nanny, is studying nursing at the same time as both her daughters.
She says she was inspired to do so after observing one daughter undertaking her diploma also through Partners in Training.
"I saw her doing work and her placements and everything else and that was the first thing that made me start thinking, 'Well, maybe I could do this."' Berry is scheduled to graduate in the second half of 2017.
Mid-year, she is intending to submit an application for a graduate role at Darwin Hospital in 2018.
It would mean relocating from Victoria to Darwin but Berry embraces the prospect.
"If you go to Darwin you get to cover a really broad area," she says.
"I want to go to Darwin and get some really good training and, by doing that placement in all those areas, I can work out where I would like to specialise and then go on and do a diploma in that area."