Grad year completed
Published: August 2022
This update is written by Hannah who graduated the Bachelor of Nursing and Bachelor of Midwifery (Hons) in 2020.
"It’s official!! My grad year is now complete.
Hello everyone!! My name is Hannah and I am a Graduate Nurse and Midwife at Monash Health. I have just completed my final rotation as a registered nurse on the Surgical Ward at Moorabbin Hospital.
The team at Moorabbin are just so incredible. The support they have shown to us grads at a time where they themselves were only just being reunited was so admirable. The surgeries we see at Moorabbin are all elective and due to covid, with elective surgeries being cancelled, the team were redeployed to other areas for months.
I was lucky enough to join the team as they all returned and the ward was reopened so it has been an eye-opening experience to see what goes on behind the scenes to get a ward back up and running.
During the reopening of the ward, we were merged with the oncology ward. As a grad beginning on a merged ward, it was really difficult I’m not going to lie. It was overwhelming learning two specialised and incredibly different areas at once. Caring for surgical patients is super fast-paced, after surgery we want to get them up to the toilet and make sure they are eating and drinking so they can hopefully be discharged the next day. Whereas Oncology is a much slower pace, which is absolutely necessary for the care we’re providing. For oncology patients, we’re trialling different pain medications to get pain under control, planning treatment whether that be radiation, surgery or chemotherapy or immunotherapy and working with allied health to try and get people safely home with the right supports in place.
Working with both types of patients at once was a lot to get my head around and because of this I really leant into and learnt from the senior nurses I was working with.
At Moorabbin, we use a team nursing model, so instead of having one nurse to four patients, you have a team of two nurses working with up to eight patients. I found this so great especially as a junior team member because I had my person to check in with and ask for help.
Some days we would team nurse the full eight patients and just keep checking in with each other to make sure everything is done. Other days we would split the eight patients so that we would have our designated four patients each and use each other for checks and cares when needed.
This team nursing model really helped me to feel like I was a valued member of the team and not just the grad that needed everything double checked.
Now that my grad year is complete, I have decided to stay on at Monash Health and job share between the Surgical Ward at Moorabbin and Maternity Services at Clayton. I will be working a week as a nurse and then a week as a midwife. I’m really excited to be splitting my time and maintaining and developing my skills in both areas. It was a really easy decision to split my time because the teams at both sites are just incredible and I want nothing more than to continue working with both.
As a grad, I have seen the importance of the team and the support they can provide and how that that is what makes a successful nurse or midwife. You have to have a team you feel safe in to be able to ask questions and learn and grow. But also have a team that is looking out for you in those not-so-great moments we see in our job, so that they can debrief with you and help you to help yourself.
Now that I have been in some amazing teams, I know that throughout my career, I will look for nothing less because they have shown how much easier it is when people have your back."
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