Student Nurse

We see them all the time in medical TV shows and movies, or if you've ever been unfortunate enough to land yourself in the emergency department of a hospital, you've likely seen the patient monitor screen, or the machine that's always beeping about something! But what do all the sounds and squiggly lines mean? In this article, we'll look at each of the body's vital signs and how they're interpreted through the patient monitor. First, it is important to understand that vitals signs form a cohesive picture of the vital…

Nurses come in all shapes and sizes, with wildly varied skills and specialities and differing levels of education and training. It is important for the practicing nurse to understand the differences between each level of nurse, and understand the associated level of education that nurse has received. Nurses have received increasing levels of continued education to fill gaps in the healthcare system, and alongside these continued training systems, new advanced practice roles have developed for the nurse to…

A UK-based artist by the name of William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1995 and he chronicled his own mental demise over his years of living with the disease. Unfortunately, Utermohlen died in 2007, but he drew a self-portrait every year until he was no longer able to before his death. The artworks offer a unique glimpse into the mind of an Alzheimer's patient, and how their mind deteriorates over time. Strikingly, we can see slow decay until 1999, where we can no longer distinguish any facial…

Managing and otherwise minimising pain and suffering of patients is a core responsibility of providing nursing care. Minimising pain makes life significantly more comfortable for the patient, and allows them to recover faster, and with a positive experience. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, and when nurses fail to read the signs of pain and do not provide remedial action, the patients are the ones that suffer greatly. The complexity of a patients condition and comorbidities can obscure significant problems in the…

Hand hygiene is a vital part of any infection control practice. Nurses are constantly disinfecting their hands hundreds, if not thousands of times per day (or at least they should be) but this mentality has spread to the greater public, with antibacterial soaps becoming more readily available, and to some, a necessity. You would expect this to be good news, but it's not. Recently emerging evidence has shown that this over-use of antibacterial soaps outside of the healthcare setting may actually be doing more damage…

We only get one chance to set our standard of care I remember when I was just a beginning student nurse, the facility manager for my first placement sat down with me and the other 3 students on placement with me and introduced us to not only the facility, but also how aged care works, and how to be a good nurse in general. One of the most important things he said has stuck with me ever since that day, and it pops into my head every time I encounter questionable practices in my nursing work. He said that we only get…

I’m into my fourth week of nursing school and so far I’m absolutely loving it. I find myself almost sad to be heading home at the end of the day, as well as constantly craving more knowledge. For the first time in my study life, I actually find myself reading the text books religiously, even when it's not even required. I find myself occupying my spare time with… strangely enough… more studying. It’s like I need to keep learning as much as I can. While it seems unusual I’m sure I’m going to look back on this in a few…

So it's the first day of the new semester and so far it's not going so well. First I managed to catch the wrong bus, but it's all good, I still managed to get to uni on time, a good 45 minutes before my first lecture is set to start. So feeling excited and refreshed by the smelter break, I decided to rock up nice and early and secure a prime position in the lecture hall. I grab some breakfast from the vending machine (a succulent mars bar), plow through it and double check the lecture hall on my timetable. Yup, I'm in…

Yesterday was certainly an interesting day. I only had one class, Bioscience, but it was an incredible experience nonetheless. I should warn any of you that are a little squeamish; you might want to skip over this one. I started out on Tuesday night not feeling all too well and contemplating not attending the practical class the next day, but only due to a quiz at the end of the class worth a mere 3% (I know it's not much but every mark is a good mark, right?) I decided it would be best for me to attend. It turned out to…

The young team of Franziska Hildebrand, Franziska Preuss, Vanessa Hinz and Dahlmeier clocked 1 hour, 11 minutes, 54.6 seconds to beat France