The Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

My name is Mitchell Turner, I'm a senior registered nurse here at St. Vincent's Emergency Department, also a resuscitation accredited nurse.

So I'm working in resusc, which is a three-bedded bay here in emergency.

We look after the critically ill patients that come in, the stabbings to shootings, the heart attacks, anything that you think is possible ... down to working in a team of three, being that I'm the team leader looking after two other nurses and caring for eight individual patients, liaising with the in-charge, the bosses and also the patients and my team members to make sure the patient gets the adequate care and up to the ward as quick as possible.

Some advice that I can give you is to jump straight into University. Personally it's worked wonders for me.

I've come out into practice and now I'm three years out and working in one of the best hospitals in Australia.

I'm Mitchell Turner and that is my story.

In primary school we had a teacher come in and talk to us about where babies come from and I actually first
helped to deliver a baby from a stocking in front of the whole class and I thought it was the most awesome thing ever.

Since I was a little girl I wanted to be a nurse. The facilities are like being in a hospital especially
when you're in a sim lab environment. I think they're first class. They simulate a hospital environment and you get to work with sim dolls and dolls that breathe and they cry and you can do all sorts of things.

So when I was at university in class we actually had the opportunity to speak to somebody who was
running volunteer programs in Nepal and I heard about this program.

I was really keen on it so I actually got to go to Nepal and help in Nepal in different
communities.

A massive part of studying nursing is that you have to be passionate about it and really want to do it and achieve your goals.

[Bec Boss, nursing student]
We both started placement, we did a lot of observations. So, we sat in the classroom, we watched the student and teacher interaction. We went out at lunchtime we spoke to the student and through observation, we were able to identify needs and started with a community analysis and come up with an health invention.

We didn't really know what I was getting into but after going through this experience of helping people, I'm aware of, I guess understanding community health, but to being part of a community and trying to really connect with the people, not just from a clinical perspective. Yeah, I love it.

[Imran Salad, nursing student]
I would really advise people to come out here and just give it a chance to see a different lifestyle to what they're used to, but I also think to have an open-minded and to be accepting other people's life choices in lifestyle as well as yours.

Because everyone is different everyone has the right, they have their own right to make their own decisions. So yeah, just giving it a shot and having a try.

[Rachael Moss, nursing student]
My favourite memory is being in the car driving to the school with the girls and singing at the top of our lung.

[Pip Dennewald, nursing student]
I chose to come out to Cobar purely because I actually wanted to see for myself what the Outback was like and I wanted to see how rural help actually was different to regional health.

I like that we had to take ownership of it and because, you know, I feel that if I have to go on other placements we're still monitored in that sense, of everything we do, but this is our time to shine and we kind of did it. And I'm really stoked that I did it.