This transcript is for the video Bachelor of Nursing Info Session
Jacqui: So first, I’d like to introduce some people here with me today. So firstly, my name is Jacqui. I’m the director of studies for the Bachelor of Nursing so Curriculum and Student Matters. So that means that I look after all, undergraduate nursing students in the program. I’m also in nursing research my area of research is around violence against nurses and more broadly, health care workers. Amanda can’t be with us today. Unfortunately, she’s unwell, but she’s our Deputy Head of School (teaching and learning). Judy, did you want to just introduce yourself?
Judy: Hi, my name is Judy Smith. I’m the first and further year student experience coordinator, a big mouthful. But that basically means that I’m here to help transition students into the university life and also working with academics to help facilitate that smooth transition so that you can get the most out of university. I’m a lecturer in nursing and my research interests are simulation and also looking at how technology impacts the way that we work as nurses and the implications to Nursing responsibilities and also to patient care. So a very interesting topic.
Jacqui: Thanks, Judy. Mark.
Mark: Hi, everyone. My name is Mark Goodhew, I’m the academic liaison officer in the faculty of Health. So basically I support students who may have a mental health condition, a disability or a physical health problem. And also, I support people who are carers or who may be pregnant as well to support them with their studies as well. I’m also a lecturer. My mainly teach in mental health and drug and alcohol nursing. And my research involves working with marginalized populations and doing co-production research as well.
Jacqui: Thanks, Mark. And we also have Rose with us this morning
Rose: Good morning, everyone. I’m Rose Calero. I’m the manager of the clinical administration unit. And I will be your, my unit will be looking after you, all your clinical placements, all your administration, all your compliance that you’ll need to to do so. You will have a lot of involvement with our unit and the team. So welcome.
Jacqui: Right. Thanks, everybody. OK, so first a little bit about us. The School of Nursing and Midwifery, it eats with some established formally back in 2020. So pretty new. Prior to that, we were part of the faculty of health, and we’ve been part of that in a permanent part of the faculty for decades before that. As a school School of nursing and midwifery were committed to improving the health and well-being of individuals and communities through our world class research, global connections and inspirational evidence based teaching. At the moment, we’re actually ranked number one in Australia, for nursing and number 11 in the world, which is something that we’re all very, very proud about. We’re privileged and lucky to have staff that include a lot of high-profile, award-winning educators and researchers. We also have experienced clinicians who are still practicing clinically. We collaborated with industry partners and we worked hard as an interdisciplinary team to help develop world class approaches to health care, education and research. And as a result, our graduates are actually very highly regarded and have a well-earned reputation as outstanding clinicians, leaders change agents and innovative researchers. At the moment, we have more than 3000 students enrolled in our undergraduate and graduate nursing and midwifery courses across the university.
Jacqui: So today’s session is also going to be your opportunity to ask us questions or if you have any questions. We can talk that into the chat, into the Q&A, and we will at the end have that opportunity to answer those. If you have, if we have a lot of questions, you might receive your answer in a text reply from one of the panellists or from the Faculty of Health marketing team who are there to help us moderate the questions. So being an online event, you know what can happen. So please bear with us if we have any technical issues, will work quietly or quickly behind the scenes to try to resolve those. If you find that at any point, you can’t access the webinar. The advice is just to log out and to log back in again. And usually that resolves any issues. But a reminder, we are recording this. So worst case scenario, you could come back and access that recording.
Jacqui: So students who complete the Bachelor of Nursing degree at UTS. Once you have completed the degree, you will become a registered nurse. And so a registered nurse is registered through AHPRA. And once you join us at UTS, you will be registered as student nurses. You can see that there are nearly 300000 registered nurses in Australia at the moment, and we are very much in demand. I would add in there as well in vaccination centres at the moment as well.
Jacqui: So, as I said, we ranked number one in Australia, something we’re really proud of, and this is. I think it’s the second they’re actually I think maybe the third or fourth year that we’ve been ranked number one. So something we’ve been able to consistently hold on to. And what do we do next is to a lot of things that really what is at the core of our business is she would commit is that we provide person centred care that is evidence based. We work in a variety of health care settings, and we can become experts in a range of specialties as well.
Jacqui: So we would really like you to come and study nursing at UTS we think we’ve got a lot to offer. If you were able to be on campus today, you would say that we have amazing sort of state of the art, nursing clinical facilities and simulation labs, and you’ll be engaging in those from your very first session of study. And it really gets, you’ll have the uniform on. And the aim is to get you to feel like a nurse from day one of these studies with this. Most of our academics are still working. Also working industry conducting research as well. And we fit that into the curriculum. We did start a new curriculum this year, and the feedback we had from our accrediting body was that it was actually a world class quality. So it was very, very I think that we received.
Jacqui: So here’s some, I guess, some logistics about The Bachelor of Nursing, including the previous ATAR ranks. It will take you three years if you complete full time. And if you were an EN and you make the criteria so that you can qualified in the last five years and we’ve registered, you would get through that one two years. And you can see that there are a couple of dual degrees as well. And that would take you a little bit longer.
Jacqui: So what’s involved lots of different ways that we engage with you and I guess the traditional ones or we have labs and tutorials and so tutorials in the theory subjects, clinical labs in our clinical subjects, and you would be doing a mix of those each session. We also have simulation labs that would be engaged in. Lectures a lot of that is in the online space, but we also have face to face. And then when you’re in your tutorials and in your labs, you’ll be working collaboratively as nurses we work as part of groups all the time, so as part of multidisciplinary teams. So you’ll be interacting and collaborating with your classmates. But as well as academic work. So there’s a lot of independent time, the independent study as well, and academic reading.
Jacqui: So your clinical placement start early in the degree will look a bit more about what that looks like from your first year. You’ll be going out on a clinical placement. And our first year students that are currently enrolled are getting ready for their first placement in October.
Jacqui: Lots of global opportunities as well that you can become involved in. And when campus, so 2022, let’s be positive and you’ll be that everyone will be back from campus. We’ve got lots of different clubs, including nursing specific ones that you’re welcome to engage in. And also the more traditional university clubs, I guess, around sport and extracurricular stuff. Got a range of assessments, so we’ve got a real variety that is spread across the program so that you’re not doing the same things all the time. So while they might be essays and case studies, they’re just one of the things that we do. So we aim to have a lot of practical assessments because the degree is very obviously going to become a registered nurse, that ssomething that’s practical? So we aim to integrate that in. And we also take advantage of clinical placements to assist you there as well.
Jacqui: So what does the program look like? So you can see here and we’ve kind of got this spaced out in terms of the clinical placements that you’ll be doing. So each session would be doing four subjects. Typically a clinical placement or more each session in the first year. That starts in spring session. So each year we have autumn and we have spring session rather than first and second semester. So your first clinical placement is three weeks. In second year, you have a mix of placements. So you will do, we have clinical practice subjects each session. We do a placement in those of two weeks and also specialized placements. So you do one in aged care and one in mental health as well. And the aim is to increase the number of hours as you go through the program, because you will you increase your ability to be able to provide nursing care. By the end of the degree our aim is to have you managing a patient load, obviously under the direction of a registered nurse so that you’re really ready to in as a new graduate nurse. And you can see that your final placement in spring session will be a six week placement, so the bulk of the hours is sitting there in third year.
Jacqui: UTS is pretty unique because we have special subjects that you can enrol in in your final year, and this gives you a taste of what specialty you might like to move into, and there’s a list there that you can see. So Judy would tell you, oh, you should do perioperative nursing because that’s her specialty. Where is Mark would tell you? Probably to do drug and alcohol nursing, that’s his specialty. But he’s also a mental health clinician. I would say critical care, because I’ve worked in Eds but lots of different opportunities there for you to enrol in in your final year.
Jacqui: We have a range of clinical placements, so you go to a lot of different areas. And Rose is the expert on this and can answer questions around this. But we’re affiliated with over 100 hundred clinical settings with an agreement with every local health district in Sydney, which is great. It means we can place our students widely across the Sydney area. Rose’s clinical practice unit allocates nursing placements for students. The aim is to have that within an hour’s commute from your home. Placements occur in two-to-six-week blocks, as we saw there. You’re only going to go during the week and you will either do an AM or a PM shift. So we don’t do overnight shifts. You might be pleased about that. You also do have the option to go on rural and remote placements. And you can see there some of the examples, including the air ambulance, which is a pretty cool place, but to be able to do.
Jacqui: So we’ve mentioned before the facilities that we get to use, and you can see just a little snapshot of them there, but we have high fidelity clinical simulation suites that we use. We have 16 clinical practice labs. And the aim there is to mimic real hospital settings. And you’ve got a little snapshot there, but they really are quite amazing. And they’re located in level six of our building. We also provide patient care and empathy scenarios with what we would call simulated patients or actors, just so that you have that practice speaking to a real live person.
Jacqui: And so, again, you can see all of the settings that we use here. We need to do this because not all learning is going to happen in labs which are. We do need you to develop non-technical skills, so something like communication, you do a whole subject on it because it’s really critical and at the core of what we do as nurses. And it remains one of the areas that we’re that we strive for improvement because it is linked to errors in health care and to poor patient experience, as well as a communication, teamwork all really vital. And so we get you to engage in different settings and to hone those skills.
Jacqui: So where are we? You probably have seen our building if you’ve been in the city would have seen it. We’ve got a massive campus that’s quite unique because it’s across Sydney. You can see the tower building. That is our original building. That’s the one with its logo, the full one there. So we really are in the heart of the city. We really near close to public transport and a quick walk from central station. And we’re all in building 10. And our labs are building six, sorry we located on level six. We’re on level seven. And that amazing picture that you can see there with all the glass is at the UTS Central Building, which is pretty new to us. And that’s where our library is. And it’s just quite an amazing building. Lots of amazing resources for you to access there.
Jacqui: So at the end of the degree, what what should you look like, what are we aiming for in our registered nurses? So we want you to be able to have knowledge and skills around, and these are kind of the cornerstones, I guess. So person centred care, so that what that means is you’re looking after the person, not so much the patients with, for example, a patient in bed six with the appendectomy. You’re looking after Mr. Smith. And it’s a more holistic way of looking at patient care. You’re entering a profession that really, really values the professionalism of nursing, we think it’s the most amazing profession that there is. And so it’s important to have a professional disposition. Mentioned before, already communication and collaboration, they’re key to successful patient care. Everything that we do must be based on evidence-based practice. And we go to the evidence. And that is what guides our care, and that’s what ensures that we provide safe care to our patients.
Jacqui: Indigenous cultural respect is central to what we do, and it’s woven through our studies, as well as having a stand-alone elective study. We want you to be critical thinkers, so we want you to be able to care for your patients, to think about what’s happening to them, and to be able to direct the care, to be able to raise questions. With other clinicians with doctors to provide the best care to be able to advocate for your patients. And so, above all, we need you to be professionally competent so that you’re going to be an effective part of the health care team. And I think you’ve seen at the moment in the current situation how vital nurses are in the health care system. So there is the opportunity so you can go so many, in so many directions with nursing and everyone on the panel here, it’s taken us in lots of different ways. And you might start off in acute care, and end up in education, you might move into management. And what we’ve got on here is really just a smattering of the areas that you can end up in. Where some of these things you might want to do, further study. And certainly, in nursing, what we would say is that we have a commitment to lifelong learning, and that’s part of being a registered nurse. We have to provide evidence of that professional development each year and some of these special things you might want to go on and do postgrad studies with this as well.
Jacqui: So these kind of feed into the different trees, so you will start off as a registered nurse when you complete with us and you become a new graduate nurse that’s typically a nurse in their first year. And these are all of the different things that you can become specialists, you might decide to become an educator on the ward or working in education more broadly, you know that the person in charge of each ward in a hospital or each nursing home is actually a nurse in a lot of nurses, working management and nurse practitioners are, you know, super specialized nurses who have prescribing rights in Australia. So they’re real specialists. They work in areas, for example, like wound care. We have them in emergency departments as well, other areas.
Jacqui: So UTS has lots of different resources that can help you to succeed. And it’s really important to take advantage of all of these. For example, we have the student centre. So this is where you can drop in and submit any requests online for classroom and student matters, maybe arrange a time table and things. We also have HELPS, which is great acronyms, these are the people who are sitting there waiting to help you and you writing in your academic, assignments skills that academic staff part of your studies. Timetable planner, and one of the things that we know that students struggle with and also when you graduate nurses is planning their activities. So we have a timetable planner. UTS Online is just the at the moment we removed everything is on canvas. So some of you may already be familiar with that. And it’s just that’s the repository. That’s where you interact with your subjects and all the resources there. As I said, we have an amazing library. Even though our students can’t visit it at the moment, its online presence is massive. Lots of support available for students and lots of resources there. We have an amazing careers service who work closely with nursing specialist students in their final year to help us with the events around careers, to help you practice interview skills for those new grads, jobs that you’ll be going for in that final year. So they’re a really great resource to students. And we also have something unique. We have what we call practice lab and said this is a lab that’s dedicated for our students, would share that with, midwifery as well. And students can book into that and go practice and skills. So, for example, if they had a placement coming up and they wanted to practice skills around subcut Injection’s, for example, they could book some time. The resources are there. And we also have a dedicated staff member in there to assist with that. So we think that’s really quite a great facility to have to be able to offer.
Jacqui: So how do you apply? So you’re applying through UAC, the dates on here. None-recent school leavers, there’s competitive entry, so it’s all around going to through the UX system to do this. So applicants over 20 years of age at the time of applying can also opt to sit a special tertiary admissions test. But obviously, lots of detailed information about the admission criteria can be found on our website and you can see the link to it there.
Jacqui: So now what we’d like to do is throw to you so that you can ask us any questions. Like I said before, you might just receive an answer in a text reply from one of the panellists or from the Faculty of Health marketing team who are here. They have done all the hard work behind the scenes to help us come to you today. So let’s have a look at, I might just start reading questions.
Jacqui: OK, so I’m just going to start reading out questions here and asking the audience so high, Hailey. Hailey has just asked, do you have any accelerated programs for people who hold non missing bachelor’s degrees already? We have discontinued that. Hailey so, no, we don’t. So you would come into our standard program, a simple program.
Jacqui: So someone has asked, do you recommend that of nursing, that true creative intelligence and innovation to someone who wants to work in paediatric nursing? I think so I would just answer. You know, it’s a great add on to have that have a dual degree in terms of working in paediatrics. It’s not something that would make you more specialized in it, but it may be something that, you know, adds to adds to your skills. Certainly, I would say that if that’s something that you’re interested in, that definitely you can do that.
Jacqui: So got a question about vaccinations. So do we need vaccination proof, if needed, Rose I might get you to answer that question?
Rose: Yeah. So as soon as you accept your offer for The Bachelor of Nursing, you’ll receive emails from the clinical practice unit and that will advise you of what you need to do. And we need evidence of your vaccinations. And most of you, if your school leavers, you’ll be able to get your immunization record of your MyGov. You will need to get a health card from the clinical practice unit, which is on level six. And you’ll need to get your doctor to fill that out. But yes, your vaccinations, your and COVID-19 is very much present now. And as you would have seen in the news, that it’s a mandatory requirement for health care workers. So I’d advise you to get to make sure you have that vaccine and you have that evidence. So you’ll upload that into our system and you have all those logins as soon as you accept your offer.
Jacqui: Thank you, Rose. If I’m currently studying in nursing courses, a year 12 student at school, can I use that qualification somewhere as an advantage when applying for this course? So it’s great that you’re doing that. I’m assuming that surround an assistant in nursing program through probably through one of the hospitals or through Tafe. It doesn’t add to qualifications coming into to the Bachelor of Nursing degree in terms of being able to, it’s around the UAC process.
Jacqui: Are there any international opportunities, Natasha? Yes, there are. They have been somewhat stymied because of Covid at the moment. But we do have in our third year and especially course, global health, and that has the opportunity for global placements that didn’t run this year for that for those reasons. But those opportunities do come up, we have had students previously travel to overseas as well as part of exchanges. So, yes, there are some.
Jacqui: I want to be a midwife and have been advised to look into studying the nursing first year, then applying the midwifery course. Is that a common scenario? Look, I’m just going to be biased and say you should become a nurse first, but you certainly if you’re at and perhaps that’s around the more limited numbers that midwifery take, certainly coming into nursing and having a nursing degree will give you set you up with a lot of skills and then you can apply to do midwifery. So I know that other students do do it. I have had students previously who have to have done it. Yes.
Jacqui: Can students enrol in this course if they are currently studying Diploma in Nursing at TAFE, can we get credit for the units? So you can’t get any credit because you’re coming from, I guess the basic answer is the degree is higher than Tafe. So that means that a Tafe subject, you’re not going to get recognition primarily for because it’s not completed at the same level. So if you’re currently studying it, you can still enrol in our course. But it would be the standard course. If you completed that diploma, then you would be able to come into our accelerated program, and that would bring the number of years of study down two.
Jacqui: So which majors required postgrad degree? I’m not exactly sure I’m wondering, you’re talking about the specialties that you are moving into and you can move into those specialties without those great degrees, but you will often start to study postgrad, the one that was sitting there Nurse practitioner is definitely a post graduate program that you would be doing. So if I haven’t answered that quickly, quickly, Melissa, please type another question for me. So Mark’s going to answer this one, what classes and labs are based at Moore Park? So, Mark, did you want to answer that question?
Mark: OK, so basically there’s no nursing at Moore park. It’s all at the Ultimo campus. So all of your labs, sort of the Ultimo campus.
Jacqui: It is quite an amazing facility out at Moorpark that that’s for our sports science colleagues.
Jacqui: My daughter is currently studying nursing overseas and would like to continue to study in use for any of her subjects be credited. So again, it’s on an individual basis. I would need to have a look at the transcript. I would need to have a look at, there’s a formal application process and we can provide you with those details and school recognition of prime learning. Basically what we’re looking for is that the course subject was completed within the last five years and that there is an 80 percent match to the content and the assessments of the UTS program. Also anything that was done in the clinical space, if it’s overseas, wouldn’t those wouldn’t be credited here because those hours do need to be completed here.
Jacqui: How many recent school leavers get accepted into the nursing course each year? So the estimates, I think that we have for next year are around. Six hundred, six hundred and fifty and around 200 in the EN space. Previously, we’ve taken we’re not up at a 1000, but we have taken around 800. I think they are our high numbers.
Jacqui: Is midwifery also February admission date for EN Tafe for April finisher, or is there a mid-year intake? We don’t have midyear intakes unfortunately.
Jacqui: Will this degree be valid in developing world countries? So the process for finding that out is actually to, it depends on the country. So, yes, our degrees, I recognize it’s a formalized degree, but because you’re a registered nurse, what you need to do is apply through the nursing boards in each country and to provide evidence, and then you become registered in those countries. In the end, it’s unique. Each country will have its own requirements. For example, if you were going to Canada, you’d be required to to sit in an entrance exam as well. So I think that’s answering the question there. An Australian registered nurses work in practice overseas. If you want to go to the UK and US, sp certainly can. You just have to go through the registration process in those countries.
Jacqui: If I wanted to do rural placements, will accommodation and transport be provided by UTS. We do provide some scholarships around that, but we don’t and please feel free to jump in Rose if you have anything to add. But we don’t provide accommodation and transport, is my understanding.
Rose: Yeah. You can also apply to New South Wales government to get a financial support package when you’re doing, you know, rural and remote placement. So that’s an opportunity for you as well.
Jacqui: Rose, I might get you to react to this one because it’s from a Rosie. I was wondering what the different options were replacement, for example, what hospitals were available for replacement?
Rose: Yeah, we have agreements with all our local health hospitals throughout New South Wales. So we any public hospital, we have placements in. Also, we have placements with our private hospitals in Sydney and New South Wales. So we’ve got an array of opportunities and different facilities that you will be able to access in your degree.
Jacqui: Great, thank you. How many placement hours does the UTS RN course provides? We have eight hundred and forty hours. There are minimum requirement with our per hour registering body is that you have eight hundred hours. So we now, our program, we have eight hundred forty.
Jacqui: You’re a student doing a foundation’s thiomersal in health science course with another university. Can I use this course to apply for UTS? Yes, certainly through the UAC, you would include that information and you may be able to get recognition of prior learning as well for doing those subjects at another university so make sure that your possibilities.
Jacqui: Do you have mature age students in a full time course? Any indication of the number of mature age students accepted every year? Look, we certainly have a range of students and we do have a number of mature age students. I wouldn’t be able to give you a breakdown of those though, but we do have plenty in each class that to it. We have a mix.
Jacqui: During a typical week semester, how many days would you would students spend on campus, in-person in non COVID times? So that’s a good question. So the way that we have scheduled our time table is that you will come in. It’s in an intensive format. You do choose subjects intensively for five weeks, and you people didn’t do the next two. So, for example, in the foundations of nursing subjects, you would do a four hour tutorial each week and you would also then do something for science each week. So you might find that you can do that in one or two days and then with the labs, you’re doing typically either at a five or a seven hour a day in those clinical subjects. And you’re also doing another theory subject. So depending what your timetable looks like, you can again, it would probably be one or two days as well.
Jacqui: Once I’m an RN, can I work in a private hospital straight away? So private hospitals also have new graduate programs that they will that they recruit students to apply for. Typically, that’s the route that you would go through.
Jacqui: Do students choose. I’ll get you to answer this one Rose. Do students choose which wards they go on during placement.
Rose: They don’t. The wards are a primary against all your subject ordering, and they’re allocated accordingly to the subject that you’re in, and has different areas that they’ll go into so you’ll be allocated to that depending on the subject criteria.
Jacqui: Right. Thank you. And Judy, I might get you to answer this one. Judy’s one of our clinical subject coordinators, and you will meet her in first year. So the question, Judy, is if I do part time study with the clinical hours be halved.
Judy: Clinical hours, as in, placement hours.
Jacqui: Yes.
Judy: No. Is that right, Rose, you still be required to do your job?
Rose: Yes, absolutely. Yes. If you’re doing it, if you’re doing a clinical subject and you’re doing that in that that session, you will have the clinical hours attached to that session. So you might take five years to do your degree. But when you do a clinical subject, you need to do those clinical hours with that subject in that session.
Jacqui: Great. So how many days so I think I’ve answered the question, how many days per week, how is it spread out? Ideally, in non-COVID times, what would be online? A lot of our lectures are online. We have drop-in sessions online. And then typically our tutorials and our labs and our simulations workshops are Face-To-Face. So that’s how typically the subjects will run.
Jacqui: So what is recommended for a mature age student to do so? I’m not sure exactly, Lauren, what your meaning there, whether you’re meaning part time or full time study. I guess it just depends on having a, you know, enrolling, having a look at the timetable, seeing how you cope coming back to study and then making that decision and again, factoring in the amount of time that you need to do in clinical placements.
Jacqui: Do students get an opportunity to study all nursing specialty areas before they choose an elective. So the answer to that would be no, because we’re providing a generalized degree really in terms of our content, so that it means that you can become a new graduate work. The aim would be that you have the skills and you could work anywhere with that set of skills, and then you kind of develop the skills. So some of you may have had a placement in a more specialized area before those third year placements. But that’s where you get a kind of homely skills. So Judy’s going to answer this question because she is our perioperative specialist. So, Judy, did you want to answer the question? I just lost. It was around becoming a surgeon.
Judy: Oh, OK, yeah, that was for the down there is one up the top.
Jacqui: To become a surgeon or something in that area would this course, be a good way to get there.
Judy: No, they’re very different degrees. However, if you are interested in the perioperative environment and you can become a perioperative nurse, which is my specialty, where you can be an aesthetic nurse, you can do instruments circulating. So you actually working with the surgeon, you’re actually part of the perioperative team, so you’re working right alongside the surgeon. There’s also some advanced nursing roles in the perioperative environment. So there is a nurse, nurse, surgeon’s assistant, which is actually a nurse practitioner level role. And you are independent, you have your own ABN number. And so you kind of like a consultant that works with the surgeons. And there’s also opportunities for other advanced perioperative nursing roles. So endoscopes, where you actually do procedures, nurse seditionists so giving some sedation defections as well. So there’s lots of evolving and developing advanced nursing roles in the perioperative environment. So, no, you’re not a surgeon because that’s a medical degree, and that’s six years of study and then another 10 years of, you know, work after that. But there’s certainly lots of advanced nursing roles within the perioperative space as well, and that it’s offered in third year as a specialty subject.
Jacqui: Thanks, Judy, so might get you to answer this one as well. Are there physicians’ assistants in Australia, is it a career that’s possible for nurses here?
Judy: So physician assistants, no, so that’s, I guess, the equivalent of what we would call a resident or a registrar, but as I said, I know within the perioperative space there are what we call productiveness surgeons assistants. So they might stop the operation. So they’ll, they’ll, you know, do the incision and help suture. They’ll put in drains and things like that. But a physician’s assistant know that that’s a medical role. That’s not a nursing role.
Jacqui: I think they’re in the US. I think physicians assistants. But we don’t have that.
Jacqui: If you can’t get into a graduate program job after graduating, what options are there for employment? So certainly there are there are different avenues to find employment. So, there are lots of different graduate programs, and not just through, for example, New South Wales Health, which is our biggest employer. All of the private hospitals do that. Also, general practice facilities, the GPs will take on students who, you know, nursing students who just graduated in the aged care sector. That is happening as well. You can also apply directly to RN one roles, which the one just means it’s your first year out. You may get agent work and you may become a vaccinator. And lots of there are different opportunities. And you know, that six-week placement at the end of your degree is a real great opportunity to be able to network and just to build up contacts you may be able to get to be able to make contacts that way, for example, my daughter is an emergency department nurse, she didn’t get a new grad position. However, she was interviewed separately outside that program a bit later and did manage to get a position that way.
Jacqui: Do nursing students generally learn in the same class groups. So do you have a regular group of people you work with or who do classes with? So, yeah, that’s what we’re aiming to do. So we call that streams. So, for example, when you’re doing your clinical subject and the theory subject in that second part of each session, you’re in the same stream because we want you to be in the same classes together and cohorts for those two and you go to a placement at the same time as well. And also by having longer tutorials. So the four hours, kind of gives you the opportunity to better develop those relationships as well and be with the same people.
Jacqui: If you’re a part time RN student, would your first placement be, when is your first placement? Are they the same length? So if you’re part time and you’re doing two subjects position, then your first placement, would be at the end of your first year of study and your placements are the same length. So that would be a three-week placement. That’s because you’re doing the same subject at the time. And so all the requirements are the same there.
Jacqui: Someone had asked a question about picking your major so you don’t actually have a major in our program. It’s the same accredited program for every everyone. So in terms of those third use specialist subjects, you just pick them at the time so you don’t have to come in with a preconceived idea of what you want to do. And often people come in and think, oh, I really want to be a paediatric nurse. And then they decide midway through, actually I think mental health is amazing, I’m going to I’m going to do that instead.
Judy: Yes. I’d like to know more about the pathway to become a cosmetic nurse. Finished a Diploma of Beauty Therapy. Would that help me on my application? Would a Bachelor of Nursing be available? Yes, you can do you better nursing Part-Time in terms of cosmetic nursing cosmetic or what they said was as aesthetic nursing is actually an unregulated area at the moment, but it is one that the Australian Nursing Midwifery Board and ANMAC are actually looking at to become regulated. So there’s no specific nursing course, for aesthetical cosmetic nursing. However, they are looking at where it will sit in terms of the specialty area and at the moment, they’re looking that it will come under the umbrella of perioperative nursing. So I guess if you are looking at to have something, some sort of qualification to complement your Diploma of Beauty Therapy, perioperative will probably be the closest to that, because you are learning about all those specific roles around anaesthetics, also about, you know, aseptic technique and, you know, you know, handling instruments and all that kind of stuff. So so short answer is no. There is no actual qualification for cosmetic nursing. But certainly perioperative qualifications will be what will get you leading towards that. There will be eventually. But as I said, ANMAC are looking at that now in terms of regulation, I hope that’s it.
Jacqui: Thanks Judy. Thank you. What are the latest time slots you offer practical labs in a day? Judy, do you want to answer that one? Because you work in the lab space.
Judy: So we have labs running all day, every day so Monday to Friday and we have let’s starting at well these are first year labs, eight thirty they’re five or six hour will a half hour break. So the morning session start at eight thirty and the afternoon sessions start at two thirty. So be finishing up around eight thirty.
Jacqui: So I think our labs are open from eight eight a.m. to nine pm. You know, typically we’re not running until 9:00 p.m. because we don’t really want to be there at 9:00 p.m. But we do offer them across the time.
Jacqui: Any specific subjects that we would need to be done in high school prior to applying for an orange? So I might leave marketing to answer around the specific subjects?
Jacqui: What I might mention is that the things that you can do now to kind of get yourself prepared are to look at your vaccinations, what you need to have done, because that’s something you can get started now, because vaccination is one of the key things that you need to have done to be able to attend placement. So I’m not just talking that about that Covid, the Covid vaccination, which is something that we’re recommending or we’re moving likely moving towards making that mandatory. But all the other things like whooping cough, sorry, pertussis and the different ones, also doing a senior first aid certificate, because that is something that we’re going to that we ask you to have done in your first session of the study. So, you know, once you’re able to if you can get those kind of things done, the things you can take off the list as well.
Jacqui: So to students who completed the Diploma of Mursing go with students a first year, so no, if you’re entering our accelerated EN program, you’ll entering the second year of the program. And you’ll be with us, so when you’re in classes, you’ll be with other ENs in those classes, so we try to keep that cohort together. And that’s something that Judy, who is our official video, made a kind of, you know, liaises with the different cohorts to make sure that they’re settling in effectively.
Jacqui: All right. So I think that we’ve answered all the questions and you’ve heard me talk for long enough. As we said, we will be making a copy of this available. If there are any questions that we haven’t that you think you can get in touch with us. We can answer those. Best of luck for those of you doing the HSC. We just really all want to wish you the best of luck in these difficult circumstances. Can’t imagine how difficult that must be for you all. And we really look forward to having you join us next year. We think nursing is an amazing profession. We think UTS is an amazing university to be able for you to come to be able to come to. So thank you so much. I’d like to thank the panel as well for giving us their time up on a on a Saturday. So thanks to everybody for coming along today.