Open Days 2009

There's also a shortage of Division 1 nurses worldwide. The current estimates show that approximately for every seven nurses we lose, we bring one in. So there's a fair discrepancy happening there. And so you'll never be without a job and youre going to be able to work into your 80s or 90s easily in your career. And were quite looking forward to that. Yeah, we can't wait to be looking after patients when were 95 because well bring a certain experience to it, that the patient won't have.

Why La Trobe Nursing? Well, when you go to look at a Nursing school, theres probably a number of important considerations you should take into account. The first is what sort of school and clinical facilities are provided in the university that I'm going to? Is the school well equipped and up-to-date and is the clinical facilities at the higher level in terms of my experience? Or am I going to be spending most of my time in smaller acute care or smaller community type agencies?

Is the structure of the course flexible? Can I come and go into it in different ways? Can I undertake my studies in a flexible way or am I locked into fairly rigid requirements? Is my clinical experience varied and comprehensive or is it limited and superficial? Then finally, how is the graduates from the university Im selecting regarded by prospective employers? Now if you can answer all of those questions you then are in a place to make a decision about what school youre going to go to for your preparation.

Let's begin by addressing each of those from La Trobes perspective. Firstly, our school and clinical facilities. Within the school, we have three key directions. The first is teaching. We have a number of experienced staff to provide the education. And we focus on making sure the education of students are clinically relevant and cutting edge in terms of delivery strategies. 

Our environments are comfortable. These lecture theatres are example of our major lecture areas. When we go to small tutes, you will see they're quite a comfortable tute room with all the electronic facilities that are required. And then we have our Nursing Arts Laboratory which you can see on the fourth floor of George Singer after this presentation which has just been refurbished last year.

And then when the students are placed at the clinical schools at the Alfred or the Austin for the metropolitan campuses, we have access to full high fidelity simulation centres at both those agencies. So the students can go in and actually run through simulations with other health professionals to check their practice. So that's all pretty clinical preparation in terms of theory.

Practice is the other important aspect to what we do. And unlike other schools of Nursing, we insist that our academics remain engaged with clinical. All too often, its been easy as you move into a teaching path to leave your practice behind which means you then teach materials often irrelevant or you call upon your areas.

Within the school here, we insist that our staff engage in practices. As I said, Im the lone management consultant for the Alfred Hospital. I run a clinic for outpatients every Thursday afternoon. And provide consultation to nursing homes within a 40 kilometer radius of the Alfred. The university give me half a day a week to do that because they recognize how important the practice is.

We also engage with a number of agencies in a very formal, contractual way that says we have a contract with your agency to ensure that we are preparing the best nurses that we can. And Ill talk a little bit more about that. And that we also bring clinicians into our program so that when were talking about diabetes education, it's not one of our staff that delivers that information, it's the diabetes educated from the Alfred or from the Austin that performs that information.

The final linchpin to our schools direction of course is research. We need to add to the knowledge base of nursing. And we have established research programs that enable us to do that. We have opportunities for higher degree education. So we have a number of honours, masters and Ph.D. students that are enrolled in our school. And we have collaboration with other research institutes such as the Baker Institute, the Mothers and Babies Research Institute, Sex and Health Institutes and acute care agencies.

Our school is large and we make no bones about that. We have approximately 1,200 students enrolled in our undergraduate program, 1,700 all up including postgrad. There're 50 academic staff and we've got that way because we were originally the Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences. So this school was the first school of nursing to come into universities in terms of education back in 73.

To make sure that we provide education where its needed, we have five campuses. So we don't ask all the students to come to metropolitan. We actually have five campuses and you can see that they range through the region as well as metropolitan. So Albury-Wodonga, Bendigo, Bundoora, Mildura and Shepparton.

We have also clinical schools. Now a clinical school is where we will have Professor of nursing, we'll have a senior lecture of nursing, we'll have academic staffs at lecturer level there. The whole notion of the clinical school is to provide education for undergraduate students, for postgraduate students and to do research. So our third years spend their whole third year at a clinical school. The first two years are here at Bundoora for the metropolitan students, Bendigo or Albury-Wodonga for the regional guys. And then when they go to third year they go to a clinical school for their third year.

The notion is that they then start to immerse themselves in a clinical environment. They are tagged with a clinician who they work with so that we work in a shift of the clinicians including weekends and afternoon shifts. To really consolidate what it is that they're doing as nurses. And we value this very highly. We put approximately $2 million a year into clinical schools alone just to make sure they function and are equipped to what are needed.

We also have strong industry associations with the Royal District Nursing Service. We have with Aged Care Services Australia; this is an aged care group. They have 31 Nursing homes in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. We are one of three partners in the Centre for Healthcare Innovations at Bayside Health in the role its interest to bring clinicians and industry together to come up with innovative health ideas. And we also have contracts with Premium Health to deliver our immunization education. We are the only providers of education for nurses who wish to be endorsed as immunizers in Victoria.

Our established research specialties you can see listed there. We have professors attached to each of these so there are acute care, aged care, community, midwifery and palliative. As we start to develop more, we will see trauma and probably cardiac come on board as some of our research specialties.

Because we've been around since the 70s, we have one of the largest nursing collections of literature available in world. And we often get requests from other universities in both North America and the UK for articles that weve been able to archive in our collection.

Our nursing laboratories and simulation centres as I said are well equipped and we have access to those. And I invite you to go and have a look at the lab while you're here or if you're down at the Alfred. Pop in and have a look at the simulation centre there.

Our students also have access to a number of pastoral care type facilities. Because were nurses of course, we cant talk about caring without actually caring for our staff and for our students. Thats an integral part of what we do. Staff and students get to interact with other healthcare professionals being part of the Health Science faculty. Our lecture theatres are modern and well equipped like I said. Theres specialist support like student counselling should students find they're a little bit of difficulty.

We have financial counselling for students who find themselves in those sorts of problems. We have dedicated academic staff for providing study skills, support during their course. We have staff who provide progression support for students called ACKSIS, terrible name. But they are there to provide support. And as we go on into the common first year next year we will have discipline mentors which is one academic to 30 students. To provide support for them as nurses and what they need to maintain their discipline focus.

And because our students tell us they dont want to work all the time, there's also a modern sporting, cultural and social amenities provided at university. So we do allow them to play a bit even though we prefer them not to do that if they could. No, of course we allow them some break time.

Our course structure, we have a number of entry options. So if youre a school leaver you of course will come in, do our degree and then go on to registration. And that degree might be Nursing or it might or it might be a double degree in Nursing and Midwifery.

If you're a mature age entry student who doesnt have a current VCE ENTER score then you can undertake a STAT test, come in and do our course through that area. Again, youll the degree and go on to registration. If you already are a university graduate, in other words, youve done another degree in another university, then you can come into our graduate entry program where well give you 12 months advance standing. Then you can go on and do two years for your nursing degree.

If youre already a Division 2 nurse through the TAFE sector, we will again provide you with 12 months advance standing and bring you into our Division 2 conversion course.

All of these courses of course enable you to go on to register as a Division 1 nurse for the Nurses Board of Victoria. If you do a double degree, youre also then endorsed by the Nurses Board of Victoria as a midwife. So youre a nurse and a midwife after the completion of that course.

And once done there of course then you can go on to do honours in our fourth year program. Where you can do postgraduate studies in any of the specialties, which you'll see later. If you're already a hospital trained Division 1 Registered Nurse, we also have the opportunity for you to upgrade your certificate to a degree, which then opens up the possibility of doing postgraduate diplomas. So there's multiple entry options into our course.

For VCE students this is what we require: three, four English with a score of at least 30 and 25 in any other English. Plus the study score of 20 in Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics or Physical Education or Physics.

If you're a non-Year 12 student or a mature age entry student, well ask you to complete a STAT M test. Thats more of an intelligence test. It gives us indication about how successful you'll be in the course so we don't bring you in, take money and just have you not complete the course. If you want information on that there is a company set up in the centre of the university what we call the Agora. And they provide support for students wishing to prepare themselves to sit the STAT M test. They happen usually in October and November of every year.

If you have a previous degree, as I said, we will give you one-year advance standing. And then you'll do two years to complete your nursing degree. If your degree is not Science, in other words, its an Arts degree; we do ask you to undertake a preliminary Anatomy and Physiology bridging program, which is a one-week program that happens in February before we start the academic year.

So we will allow Arts and Science graduates to come into our course which is different from other universities. And actually, I have to say the Arts graduates do better than the Science in terms of overall when we look at grades, the Arts students actually get higher grades overall.

Registered Nurses, as I said, if you're already a Division 2 Registered Nurse, you can do our conversion course. We do ask that you sit a STAT test to come into that. The problem we have from takers at TAFE give people achieved or not. It's very hard for us to know how well they've achieved. And now the new course coming along this year, they will give out A, B, Cs and Ds so it makes it easier for us to select the students. But up until we get that, weve asked people to do a STAT test to give us some indication of how well you'll do in the course. If you want information on the bridging program, it is here at the Human Bio site, which you will see. Applications of course occur through the normal VTAC process.

I should point out that we do have an inclusives policy and inherent requirements policy in the university. That means if you have a disability, we will take you into the course. We have a number of students with various disabilities from dyslexia through to total deafness. However, you may not be able to complete all of the clinical requirements with your disability and therefore not be able to complete your degree. However, we make every effort to help you and we have a number of different strategies that we put into place to help students with different requirements.

Our ENTER scores, to give you an indication, for the last five years you can see have been fairly steady for the Bachelor of Nursing around the 73s or the low 70s. The Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Midwifery has been slowly reducing down to 82 last year. And that's because weve been increasing numbers. We have approximately 700 applicants of which we use to take 20. Over the last few years weve increased that to 30 and increased that to 40. And were going go for 50 next year because the demand is just so high and were trying to help get students into it. And of course, as you increase your numbers the ENTER score goes down.

The course options as Ive already alluded to are two. So you have a Bachelor of Nursing option which is a three-year pass degree that leads to Division 1 registration. And the Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Midwifery which is a double degree that leads to Division 1 registration plus endorsement as a midwife by the Nurses Board of Victoria. It's a four-year course that combines both and the midwifery units start in year one. So its not a three plus one model. Its midwifery integrated throughout the whole four years.

So the students work very hard. I'll pull no bones. This is a very intensive course. Students will work in their summer breaks and in their other breaks to get their clinicals finished. But they are our stars and they do very well and theyre very well respected in the industry.

And in fact, we were the only people with a double degree. Other universities that actually went with a direct entry in midwifery program, theyre now converting into double degrees because theyve had the feedback from industry that our graduates are a more appropriate person to have in their agencies than people that are direct entry in midwifery. As you'll see Deakin's alums say this year.

OK. In terms of our first year, we have the new programs starting next year. And the first year will be an integrated first year of all Health Science students. And the reason were doing that is to start all of the graduates thinking about the healthcare team from their very early inceptions. And the most important of course the normal sciences are there. You will need to have Bio and Behavioral Health Science preparation to be a nurse. But there is at least two units here, Interprofessional Practice A and Interprofessional Practice B, where the students will work in multidisciplinary teams to solve real patient problems.

So we will bring case studies in from our practices, into the classroom. Students will work with physios, OTs, speech pathologists, social workers to actually try to solve that patient problem. And were doing that right from first year because they'll do that when they graduate. And the need to work as a team will become even more important as we start to change healthcare within Australia.

We do however provide a nursing specific unit called a Centre of Nursing Care of which there are 30 hours of clinical attached. Where students will start to practice what we call activities of daily living. Helping to clean a patient, helping to feed a patient, helping to make a patient comfortable.

The common first year as you can see here, as Ive said, is about getting people together. There are some exceptions to the common first year; you can see them listed here. Because there are programs such they allow to come into next year but they will after that.

The most important thing about the common first year is this critical thinking approach where students will work with case studies principally as I said with teams. And were trying to get them to think about solutions. Now each team, 25 students in a team, will be led by an academic, a healthcare practitioner. So they will help the students with their endeavours. But the whole idea is to give the students to actually work through the problem themselves.

At the end of the common first year, you are entitled to transfer to other courses. So that if you come in as a Bachelor of Health Science student, the end of your first year you think Nursing is the go for you, you can transfer into the nursing degree. The only exclusion at the moment is the double degree of Midwifery student because to have that happen, because they're doing midwifery in that first year, you effectively become a five-year degree. So they would convert have to complete the midwifery units and then go on and do the remaining four years.

So we're recommending no for that but certainly for the other areas. And equally, if you come in as Physio or OT and decide its not for you and you want to transfer to Nursing you can do that.

The other thing about the common first years, weve been very diligent about making sure that the number of hours dont overtax the student. Its too easy to keep building more material into the course until suddenly you find students dying, and you realize that you probably overdone it a tad. So we've been really diligent. We've written this new curriculum. There's only 10 hours of student work per credit point. Dont go overloading these guys because they do have to work nowadays to earn a living. And they do have to have social life or otherwise, they start throwing things at you. And we don't like throwing things at us.

In second year, we start to look at skill acquisition and start to look at the variety of healthcare. Give the students a taste for what are the things that I can do as a nurse and where am I best suited. So we have acute care, we have mental health, we have communities. Now here are three specific areas of health that they get to experience as well as some Pharmacology, as well as looking at clinical assessment and decision making around nursing scenarios.

You can see the amount of clinical we build in here, now increases quite substantially. And that's because were now getting the students to immerse themselves into what it is to be a nurse and what these different areas offer.

At the end of this second year, their then eligible to register with the Nurses Board of Victoria as a Division 2 nurse. And we encourage all of our students to that because they go into third year they'll need the flexibility around their employment to meet their third year commitments. As a Registered Nurse Division 2 they can register with an agency. An agency will be able to give them shifts around their other commitments for their studies. Where if they're working in a bar on Friday and Saturday nights or theyre working at McDonalds and have a fixed appointment, then they won't be able to make those requirements as they go into working with their buddies in third year or they'll find it difficult.

In third year, we help the student consolidate. So we say, You've had a couple of years of theory. You've got a bit of a taste for the different areas. Now were going to hone you, ready for your graduation and your role as a registered nurse.

So we go into complex care. Highly complex patients requiring multiple facets to their care or a large groups of patients requiring multiple facets. And actually help the students work with how do you do this when you've got these things happening all at once.

We do look at older people again and we make no apologies for that because the population is getting older. And we need to make sure that our students are equipped to look after elderly people. Principally the academic staff when they're getting old and in need of care.

We have a clinical practice consolidation. This is all happening down at the clinical schools. Remember, this is the Alfred or the Austin or Bendigo Health or Albury-Wodonga Private. Where theyre doing these consolidated clinical. So theyre actually working with a buddy, spending the whole semester in clinical before they become a registered nurse. So hopefully by the time they're registered, they're where they need to be in terms of confidence levels.

We do look at chronic conditions, how do you go about managing chronic. Remember I told you chronic conditions are increasing; nurses play a key role in managing them. So we look at that and we do look at challenging interactions like giving bad news. How do you tell parents in an emergency department that the young kid has been killed in a car accident? We actually work through those scenarios and help them come to terms with how that's going to be and how they're going to feel themselves. And how you can kick cats when you need to or you should'nt kick cats and other things.

Throughout the whole year, we actually encourage them to be independent and critical thinkers. We love it when the students actually challenge us and make us think about things differently and that happens consistently. Our students will constantly come back with new ideas or ways of doing things. And we usually then funnel them in to Honours Research to see and test the hypothesis.

The Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Midwifery has a number of additional subjects as I said. You can see there theyre starting first year as I said. They have a substantial and additional amount of clinical attach to them as you can see. And as I said the students work very hard but its very rewarding for them. And if youre interested in delivering babies and helping women throughout that process, it's a great course. I'm married to a midwife. She keeps reminding me how important it is.

Some costs, it's probably important to take into account. You will of course receive HECS support from the Federal Government as you undertake our degrees. Even some of our postgraduate courses have HECS support.

Here are some additional personal costs however. We say allow about $700 in the first year for books. We try to buy books with a three-year life cycle so the books that we ask you to purchase in first year we hope will be used in the second and third year, and they generally are. 

Personal dress, if youre going to clinical, we do require a uniform. You can see a couple of students modelling here and the students who will speak to you today have it on as well. We do spend large amounts of hours talking to students about what the uniform should look like every year. Should it be three quarter length sleeve, should it be tailored waist, should it have splits in the back. Im surprised by the actual variety you can have in a shirt but there are, lots of them. And we say about $120 for that. It is emblazoned with the La Trobe logo so that when they're out in clinical, people know who they are and what they are. And it stops them wearing it down to the pubs and that sort of stuff.

We also encourage you to buy your tools of the trade. So you will need a stethoscope and it will need to be a fairly expensive one. Don't go buying a cheap one because you can't hear things and they fall apart. We ask you to buy a small health kit which its got things like pupil torches, and spatulas and all that gear youll need for your course. You will need a comfortable pair of shoes because you will be walking around a fair tad, so it needs to be there. You'll need a watch, preferably with a sweep hand so you can take pulses. But more importantly, so you know it's time to go to tea break. That's very important. And thats about $250 all up. 

In addition, we ask students to undertake a first aid certificate to level 2 before they go to clinical. And the reason we ask you to do that is that we teach you secondary and tertiary care. We don't teach you first aid. However, as soon as your immediate community find out that youre a student nurse, they will expect you to provide first aid for them. In fact, you probably should dedicate one room in your house as a small emergency consulting room.

Because everybody will come to you for support, care and help and you need to know what you're doing. Equally, when you get out into an agency and if a relative or a patient suffers a cardiac arrest, you need to be able to revive them.

So we do ask you to do your first aid certificate before clinical. Its about $100 to $200 depending on where you undertake that. You will require a police check. Department of Human Services requires all students to have undergone police check before they go into an acute care agency. They were $14 this year. I don't think they're going to be a lot more next year.

If you already have something on your police record, it's not the end of the world. We have had students with quite concerning convictions on their police check, we have negotiated with agencies to give the student a clinical placement and theyve gone on. Im talking about assault and drug theft are examples. And agencies have very kindly accommodated those students with our supervision. And they've been able to go on and register. So it's not the end of the world if you've got a bad police record. However, you will require a check before you go on clinical.

We also require you to undertake a list of immunizations that we will provide you with before you go out. And that's because we don't want you to catch anything when you're out there looking after patients. It's bad for us because you come into class and you might give it to us. You know, spotting and all that sort of stuff.

So we'd like you to be immunized. You can get it through your local GP or your local council. We do actually invite the local council here to come on campus for a day and immunize our students for those who require it.

All of these things are going to be needed before you go on clinical. We won't let you go on clinical unless you have those three things done. We're quite clear about that and we have students crying in our office because they haven't met one. And were pretty tough with them I have to say because these are the requirements to look after a patient. We have a duty of care to the patients youre going to care for. And you're not going to care for them until we know you've made it.