Faculty Focus
campusreview.com.au
Skilling up: the postgrad edge
Raising nursing’s influence
in the health system.
By Conor Burke
In comparison to other disciplines,
Australian nursing has only come
relatively lately to academia.
Traditionally, academic qualifications
were not viewed as necessary for nurses.
The movement of nursing education to
the tertiary sector has seen many changes
from the traditional apprenticeship model,
and the characteristics of nurse academics
reflect these.
– Kay Roberts and Beverley Turnbull,
Collegian, 2002 Jan;9(1):24-30
T
hese changes are still relevant
today, for a profession that
has only been recognised as a
tertiary qualification since the 1980s and
continues to fight for better recognition
within the healthcare system. But how
many nurses do you know who complete
more than the minimum CPD required
for each registration period?
8
At a time when conversations are being
had about increasing nurse leadership in
the Australian health system, continuing
education at the postgraduate level could
be key to achieving this.
“One of the things people underestimate
is that they think a nurse is a nurse is a
nurse,” says Australian College of Nursing
chief executive Kylie Ward.
“[But] your junior doctors and your
training doctors come and go. The doctors
in those areas ... are not employed to be
in the ward or a hospital unit all the time.
They have heavily relied on the expertise
and leadership of nurses.”
Ward sees undergraduate qualifications
as the minimum education that allows a
nurse the opportunity to practise, but she
wants nurses to think about progressing
their skills sooner rather than later.
“What we would expect and advocate
as the professional body is that a nurse
would spend a year consolidating the
learnings at a novice level, and then I
would expect by second year a nurse
should be entering postgraduate
certificate qualification with an intention
to moving towards a master’s at some
stage,” she says.
This was the path that Ammu Nandi
followed. Nandi is an oncology nurse at
the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in
Melbourne and is currently studying for
a master’s degree.
Originally doing an undergraduate
degree in teaching, she made the switch
to nursing and has continually upskilled
since graduating in 2015. Keeping
up to date in an evolving field is her
motivation.
“I finished university, did my grad year,
then I had a year of just regular nursing,”
she says.
“Once I got into the graduate certificate,
I had two years out of uni and I was a little
bit nervous about it.
“But I actually really enjoyed it, and I
realised I’m the type of person that if I’m
not doing something or keeping myself
busy and not having that progress, I guess
I feel like I’m a bit stagnant.”
The combination of work and study can
be daunting for some, but Nandi says she
is lucky to have the support of her course
supervisor as well as her workplace.
“I think if you don’t have a supportive
workplace you’d really struggle. But in the
case of my master’s degree, no, because