Thanks for the reply it has been very helpful.
I wish I had looked into this career years ago!

Thanks,
Daid

You may find that you come up against some egos when doing student placements, but my advice to you there is to take it all in & decide not to practice in that manner when YOU are registered! Nursing really can be a world of ‘eating our young’, and the only way to change that is to change the way WE treat new grads & students.

With regards to getting a job, you may hit some hurdles. I still believe that there is plenty of work out there for nurses (as I posted in Nursing Shortages), however some of the comments on that post show otherwise.

QLD health won’t laugh you out of the hospital when you apply for a grad position at all. My advice to you is to start building some relationships during your third year of nursing studies. Work out where you want to work (ie, oncology), then try to get some student placements in that field. While you are there, meet the NUM & mention that you’re keen to do a postgrad placement there. Follow up a few weeks later with an email or letter, you can even ring them down the track to let them know you’re keen to work with them. Building relationships is still important in order to land that job you’re really after, despite QLD health’s official take of taking each individual application based on interview only.

Employees are not allowed / supposed to discriminate to new RN’s based on their previous work history (ie, if they have EN / AIN experience or not), however it does look good on your application to have done a year for instance working as an AIN in nursing before you graduate. I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you have enough time left in your week to pursue something like this! Plenty of people land jobs without previous experience.

Good luck David!

I’ve just started studying nursing at CQU part time. This is a complete career change for me and at 41 I was wondering if I would be considered to old?Considering I will be about 45 when I finish will Queensland Health laugh me out of the hospital if I came looking for a graduate position?

I would really like to work in oncology somtime down the line. Is there anything I could do in the meantime to help me get into this field down the road (helping etc…)?

Thanks and the site is great.
Dave

Are you able to elaborate at all?

Universities that offer nursing courses in Australia can be found here, if you want to do enrolled nursing or courses for AIN you can search for your local TAFE online.

Good luck!