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UNE to provide critical training for regional nurses

July 28, 2006

JackieLea.thumb.jpgRegistered Nurses working in regional and remote areas of Australia will soon be able to gain specialist knowledge of acute care nursing – knowledge desperately needed in many of those areas.

The University of New England will launch its new Graduate Certificate in Acute Care Nursing program at the beginning of next year. This one-year distance-education program will allow nurses with no access to existing city-based training courses to gain this much-needed qualification.

Planning the new program has involved extensive consultation with clinical nurses in both the Hunter New England Area Health Service and the North Coast Area Health Service. Jackie Lea (pictured here), Clinical Coordinator of Nursing programs at UNE, said the planning – initiated by Dr Mary Cruickshank in UNE’s School of Health – had focused initially on nursing in and around the operating theatre, and had then broadened to include emergency, intensive-care, and coronary-care nursing.

“There’s already enormous interest in the Graduate Certificate course from graduate nurses working in the Area Health Services,” Ms Lea said – “particularly from those who graduated two or three years ago. The certificate program will not only provide regional Health Services with well-qualified staff in these critical fields of nursing, but will allow nurses themselves to extend their professional skills – and their careers – in this new and important direction.”

Dr Glenda Parmenter, the Coordinator of UNE’s Bachelor of Nursing program, said the new postgraduate course would build on the University’s long-standing and highly-regarded expertise in the delivery of nursing programs by distance education. “And it will be another tangible UNE contribution to the work of our Area Health Services,” she added.

Ms Lea explained that the course would be organised into two streams, with students choosing to focus either on “perioperative nursing” (operating theatre and recovery room) or “trauma and critical care nursing”. “Also, the core units will provide an opportunity for articulation into our Master of Nursing program,” she continued.

Entry requirements for the Graduate Certificate in Acute Care Nursing course are a Bachelor of Nursing degree and current employment as a Registered Nurse. For more information, phone Jackie Lea on (02) 6773 2974.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at July 28, 2006 03:20 PM