Nurses Eat Their Young

Originally written for Vertigo magazine 

“Nurses eat their young”, I was warned, ominously, before starting my nursing degree. It brought to mind images of snarling ladies in starched white, Florence Nightingale–esque uniforms, fangs bared, dripping with blood.

What horrors was I to expect? I was terrified before my first clinical placement. I wondered if the lab sessions, textbook readings and videos on subcutaneous injections would really prepare me for looking after real-life patients. Worst of all, I was anxious about dealing with the terrifying nurses we’d heard about. As it turns out, the vast majority of nurses are kind and supportive. I’ve rarely been subject to bullying from older nurses – no newbie nurses were ever devoured in their midst. Nonetheless, nursing is a fast-paced, stressful profession, with enormously high stakes. Every one of us has heard a horror story about the result of student errors, and the thought of your mistake being told to subsequent students as a “how not to” incident, keeps us all on edge.

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Clinical placements form a large part of both the nursing and midwifery degrees, with an increasing number of hours required each year. While UTS does its best to prepare us for the workplace, there is nothing like being in a real hospital ward. Now in our third year, my fellow students and I have experienced hundreds of hours in emergency departments (ED), intensive care units (ICU), nursing homes, childcare centres, community mental health teams, mental health in-patient units, children’s hospitals, non-government organisations (NGOs), and hospital wards. Some students choose to undertake placements in rural or regional areas, and the stories they bring back from far-flung parts of the state are fascinating.

The length of time we spend off-campus on clinical placements – which eats into our face-to-face teaching time and ability to work in paid employment – increases the challenge of balancing the other demands of university. Compulsory classes, exams, family commitments, assignments and the dreaded group project are hard enough to juggle without taking out up to six weeks per semester. And the shortened teaching sessions, which reduce our face-to-face time even further? Let’s not even go there.

As I hurtle through the final year of my nursing degree, I certainly feel like I’ve been chewed up and spat out. I am exhausted. The shift work and physical demands are enormous, and that’s before you add the emotional strain.

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This week on placement I have looked after a four-year-old boy on a ventilator awaiting a lung transplant, a nine-month-old baby with a new diagnosis of cancer whose heartbreaking cries of “No! Mama, mama!” rang out across the ward while she had her IV cannula inserted, and a five-year-old girl who is wheelchair-bound as a result of a motor vehicle accident. Her parents can’t visit and she cries when she is lonely.

Nursing is a tough gig.

As nursing students, we are not afraid of blood, sweat and tears, as we crawl wearily, half-broken and dishevelled, towards our goal. However, for many of us, the goal of working as a registered nurse (RN) may not eventuate, at least at first. The number of new graduate positions being offered in 2017 is far less than the number of student nurses graduating. We’re all acutely aware that we may not be one of the lucky ones selected. We’ve submitted applications and begun interviews over the last few months and continue to do so. We’re approaching the gruesome end and it’s becoming frighteningly real.

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But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve loved studying at UTS. I have met the most amazing people while studying nursing, and have made life-long friends. I was involved in setting up UTS’s first student society for nursing and midwifery students, UTS HUGS, and the small but dedicated group on the general committee are doing fantastic things. Regular social events are being planned, and the inaugural nursing and midwifery pub-crawl was held in August. Professional development courses such as First Aid and Mental Health First Aid are in the works, and in June we teamed up with batyr to deliver seminars on preventing burnout, managing stress and maintaining good mental health while studying.

I entered this nursing degree with a sense of trepidation, nervousness, and fear, but also with excitement. It is a privilege to be a part of a patient’s life on their journey to recovery. While it has been a more challenging endeavour than I initially expected, it has also been more rewarding than anticipated. On one hand I am petrified at the thought of being responsible for my own patients in mere months, but on the other I am also eager to get my teeth into it.

Day in the life of a nursing student

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Featured image courtesy of Pexels.