Nursing in Australia
Registered Nurses may undertake postgraduate specialist courses, enabling extended practice from areas as diverse as specialist inpatient care to roles in the community, including primary health provision, public health, and research.
[3] Additional payments recognise night and weekend/holiday shifts, with paid annual leave reaching 5–6 weeks.
The applicant is then required to provide affirmation of the following to be considered: The general requirement for registration as a nurse practitioner (and there are variations) include general registration as a nurse (or midwife), achievement of requisite hours of supervised experience in a leading practice, which is 3 years full-time within the space of the previous 6 years; and a master's degree from an approved provider.
Enrolled Nurses (ENs) are educated in the TAFE sector in Diploma courses lasting 24 months.
Mental health nurses must complete further training in order to provide client referrals.
[17] They are provided by the university sector as masters postgraduate diplomas or post graduate certificates, depending on the length and complexity.
The courtesy title "sister" remains used by many registered nurses, both female and male, with a sense of affection, humour, or a deep respect for tradition.
At the time there were strong sectarian forces at work in Sydney, and concern arose among the evangelical Protestant factions who dominated the boards of hospitals.
Remuneration as an employee depends on factors including the role to which a nurse is appointed, additional qualifications and the years of experience within the position.
[27][28] A census in the 1800s found several hundred nurses working in Western Australia, this included Aboriginal female servants who provided care.
This potentially disadvantaged nurses living in regional areas that bordered another state who might wish to be employed in a hospital over the boarder.
[30] Individual state nursing licensing bodies throughout Australia were replaced by a single national board for each profession constituted by the federal Australian Health Practitioner Registration Authority (AHPRA).
[31] In 1901 the Victorian Trained Nurses Association was established by a meeting held at the (old) Melbourne Hospital.
At that time there was almost no social security, and the association was concerned with its members having access to support in case of an accident, sickness, old age or "other necessitous circumstances".
Nursing schools had been accredited in eight metropolitan hospitals (Alfred, Austin, Children's, Homeopathic (later Prince Henry's), Melbourne, Queen Victoria, St Vincent's, and Williamstown) and 27 country hospitals (Amherst, Ararat, Bairnsdale, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Clunes, Colac, Creswick, Echuca, Geelong, Hamilton, Horsham, Inglewood, Kyneton, Maryborough, Maldon, Mildura, Mooroopna, Nhill, Ovens (Beechworth), Port Fairy, Sale, St. Arnaud, Stawell, Wangaratta, Warracknabeal, and Wycheproof).
[34] By October 1910 it was reported in The Age that the RVTNA had 937 RNs on their register, a further 376 held double certificates, and the number of nursing training schools had increased to 40 across the state.
Registered nurses were entitled to a certificate, a badge, and, according to section 15 of the Act, a "prescribed distinctive headdress".
Those who had a sole qualification in Psychiatric or Mental Deficiency Nursing could obtain registration as a RNA.
RN Division 4 (formerly RMRNs) were nurses trained solely in institutions that cared for people with an intellectual disability.
[59] The medical superintendent noted that an advantage of having male nurses was that they would not be lost to the profession due to the "havoc" of marriage.
[60] The Austin Hospital had started employing males in nursing roles in the late 1930s,[61] and it was reported that a male nurse with theatrical skills had produced an Ivor Novello play to raise funds for the hospital auxiliary in the late 1948.
[68] Two males graduated from the Repatriation General Hospital in March 1953, one of them, K. McMahon, topped the state examinations.
First, second and third-year student nurses were often differentiated by the number of stripes on their uniform caps and or belts.
[71]: s31(a) Despite this, it was previously possible for an RPN or RMRN to apply for registration as an enrolled nurse without additional training based on their existing experience.
As recently as the 1980s, Sandra Stacy, one of the first Australian nurses to attain a PhD enrolled in a school of anthropology to submit her thesis.
[74] In the late 1970s, the Royal College of Nursing Australia pioneered a course that became the Diploma of Applied Science (Nursing), awarded by the Lincoln Institute in Melbourne (now part of La Trobe University) and Cumberland College of Health Sciences in Sydney (now part of the University of Sydney).
[17] The transfer of nursing education to the university sector continued throughout the 1980s, and gradually hospital schools ceased operating.
There has been a gradual reduction in hospital-based practicum sessions in University courses: hospitals now charge tertiary providers for student nurse placements, and governments apply funding quotas for enrolments.
A number of conservative people believe appropriate and separate gender roles should be respected as either "god-given" or part of the "natural order".
For example, the Nurses Registration Acts of both Tasmania and Victoria in the 1950s expressly forbade males from training as or practising as midwives, and was not repealed until the mid-1970s.
