My Nursing Years.

This post would take a lot to cover with the stories that I have so I will condense it and give you a briefer overview. 

Firstly P.T.S. which was our first three months of training. Intense and non stop. We spent most of the day in class and demonstrations with practice sessions to follow. This covered bed baths, basic dressings, cleaning, Anatomy and physiology, nutrition and lots of testing. We were then ready to be let out on the wards. And what a shock this was. My first ward was 1A and held the amputees. Never before or since have I seen so many people without their limbs and not only that most were diabetics who do not heal well and the areas were gaping. Most were smoking as this was allowed in those days and looking back at makes me cringe. 

The hospital where I trained was a specialist hospital and held the respiratory unit, the endocrine unit, the cardiac unit and the Psychiatry ward. All fascinating in their own right. There was also general medical and general surgical.

The years flew by and it was not long before I was a senior nurse on these wards managing the drugs, IV's and patient care.

I graduated in May 1976 and decided to leave New Zealand for greener pastures and more opportunities. I had a friend living in Melbourne so decided to move over for a year, get a job and see what happened. The job I got was working on the medical ward of a hospital on night duty. It was very interesting and I nursed a lot of Jewish people who had survived Auschwitz. This was challenging and an eye opener to the world for me. 

 I saved enough to go travelling to Europe and then returned to New Zealand where I staffed at the Women's Hospital on the termination and surgical ward. I also did a lot of hours in Gynaecology Casualty. 

Two years in I decided to return to live in Australia so applied back at the same hospital that I had previously worked in. From there I moved house and suburbs and ended up in various places including agency nursing, rehabilitation, geriatric and general medical which I loved. 

I nursed people from bush fires who had been severely burnt and needed so much help to get back on their feet again.

For eighteen months I worked in a large hospital in the CAT scan, nuclear medicine and ultrasound departments and then transferred to the infectious ward. MRSA [golden staph.]  was beginning to be a huge problem then as it is today.

Working in many fields of nursing gave me so much experience. Most of this time I was on night duty which I loved and when I had my daughter it fitted in very well with the school routine.I slept while my daughter was at school.

My last job was on the road as a community nurse mainly doing dressings and assessing people for care. This too was rewarding. 

 I had an interesting and varied career and now that it is over I can move on satisfied that I contributed a little to help others.