Resilience a Nursing Journey: Nursing Career Options

By Dina Lampen

The book tells about a nurse’s career throughout Australia while practicing in private, public, and community sectors. It shows the readers some options for nursing students in different fields of nursing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669886204

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Dina Lampen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/04/2022

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CONTENTS

My Nursing Career

Hospital-Based Versus University Training

Why Nursing As A Career?

Nurse Assistant

Uni Sa Student Nurse

Aboriginal Skull

Clinical Assessments

Clinical Placements

Private Hospital Night Duty

Children’s Ward

Esophageal Cancer

Palliative Care

Surgical Ward

Code Blue Team

Visible Heart

Drugs Of Dependence

Remote Nursing

Pregnant Student

Bullies

Resilience

My journey as a registered nurse, identifying the various pathways in nursing. To prevent burnout, it is possible to reinvent oneself and still have an exciting career in nursing.

39042.png MY NURSING CAREER

As I semi-retire, I’ve taken on a contractor role undertaking health promotion clinics and flown from Queensland to Darwin and Victoria to undertake clinics. Covid-19 has put a stop to being able to provide clinics in pharmacies, so my focus has been on learning reiki and crystal healing, which I’ve used on my grandkids and myself and plan to venture using on others who I can help. It’s a great way to end my nursing career as a holistic healer.

I wish to thank all those nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals I have worked with over the years. I am thankful for all the amazing and challenging positions and environments where I have nursed. I want to thank all the patients I have nursed and the things they taught me about empathy and respect as each patient or client is as individual as their health issue.

A big thank-you to my nursing lecturers who knew my capabilities before I did and nurtured me during all my studies.

My nursing students and colleagues, who suggested I write about my exciting nursing career.

My amazing daughter, Krystal, who only knew me as nursing during her childhood. She claims she got her work ethic from my example.

39042.png HOSPITAL-BASED VERSUS

UNIVERSITY TRAINING

39042.png WHY NURSING AS A CAREER?

I believe that certain events in one’s life lead to a path you are destined to take.

As a young witness to my little sister’s terrible accident and her years of being hospitalized, I met some extraordinary caring professionals. Growing up in a household of abuse, living with a mother who suffered from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, my survival from this abusive life was to rejoice in meeting people I thought were angels. When visiting my sister, the nurses always spoke gently to me, gave me drink and food, and I watched them interact with care and love to their young patients.

At a young age, I was removed from my country of birth with no relatives who visited. No one in our family knew of the abuse we suffered. At the time of my sister’s accident, I only spoke Dutch, and interaction with these angels was through touch and observing their actions. I did not want to be like either one of my young parents. I chose to be like these angels, and I believe their examples of kindness showed me the path to follow. The only other career I wanted to be in was as an air hostess, to fly away and keep as far away from life as I knew it.

Nursing has provided me with many opportunities. I have been fortunate to travel during my career. I have been witness to many different experiences as I expanded my skills working in different areas within facilities. Working within metropolitan hospitals and remote areas has presented many different challenges in my career.

I lost one of my twin babies at the age of 23. I worked in Darwin doing several untrained jobs, even worked in a cake shop, deli store, and looking after other people’s children in the caravan park where we lived. I was a patient at the Casuarina Hospital when I lost one of my twin sons. My experience in the hospital as a patient was devastating, and I have written a poem in this book ‘Fear of Pain’ that reflects my experiences as a patient and its devastating effects on my well-being.

After the collapse of my first marriage, then without a husband and children, I was fortunate to find facilities that required experienced unqualified people to manage aged care hostel facilities. At this stage, you could work in a nursing home as a nurse assistant or night manager for hostels. This was my way of returning to the essence of who I am.

I am a nurturer. I was able to work for a physiotherapist as an assistant and learned new skills in pain management. I found my soul mate, and with his support and encouragement continued to work in part-time positions and was fortunate to be blessed with a baby daughter. I did not want to become too overprotective of her. I continued to work in various clinical settings until my husband joined the air force. We moved from our home in Tasmania to an air force-based home in South Australia.

During the course of my husband undertaking training OHS qualifications, an opportunity came for me to apply and be accepted into the last conversion course before all nursing training was to be university-based. I chose to