Master of Nursing (Medical Imaging) student, Gracieann Estorba, decided to specialise in medical imaging to broaden her knowledge and enhance her career.
“This area of nursing is increasingly popular because it expands the scope of nursing, and I believe this specialty will grow in popularity as technology advances.”
La Trobe’s Master of Nursing (Medical Imaging) is the first postgraduate nursing course in Australia to formally recognise the medical imaging nursing specialty.
“As the only master's program that is available for medical imaging in Australia, I feel privileged to be able to build my knowledge and skillset in this area with La Trobe.”
“The course has broadened my knowledge and helped me take on more responsibility as a radiology nurse. As radiology is a fast-paced environment, with high patient transfers, I have used the knowledge gained from the acute and critical care program of the master's to identify and respond to clinically deteriorating patients during their transport, scans and procedures.”
Gracieann said a highlight of the course was being able to write a research project in her workplace.
“I conducted a three-week clinical audit of procedure start times of elective angiography body procedures. The study was able to identify the common causes of delays preoperatively and revealed that the average waiting time of patients coming in for body procedures, whether with local anaesthetic or general anaesthetic, is 30 minutes.”
“I hope that the results of the study I conducted will be used to improve workflow efficiency in radiology departments. It is a first nurse-led audit of workflow efficiency in our department.”
After completing her studies, Gracieann would like to put her new knowledge to use by researching radiology nursing around the world.
“There is so much more to explore in radiology nursing as a new nursing speciality. The growing availability of articles about radiology nursing makes it more exciting to search for more.”
“I would like to explore the scope of radiology nursing in different countries and compare it with current Australian practice.”
