Austhaiadviser’s Blog

Nursing Challenging Work

It has been quite sometimes since I wrote my last post. I will try my best to write about my work just to let others know a bit how it is likes working with critically ill patients.

I have been a nurse for nearly 2 decades witnessing suffering of all kinds that human can have. I sometimes think I understand the patients’ suffering as I also used to get sick like them. I am a Buddhist practitioner who was brought up in the Buddhist community. I started my nursing in the hospital that most of patients and family are Buddhists. We have a strong believe in karma. You do good you get a good consequence , you do bad bad thing happen to you. People have a very high moral especially an elderly. The patients and family appreciate nurses’ and doctors’ work in helping them to relieve their suffering. We love to help them as we think apart from doing our job with our best we are helping somebody’s children,parents, brother, sister and grandparents. Not everybody think like me I believe. I was lucky to work with such a great team of colleagues who a few of them are now working as nurses in many different parts of the world.

Nursing in Australia is quite different from where I was originally trained. The knowledge is the same, but the principle and attitude are very different.
It is my opinion what I write about. I am writing about my personal experience and opinion. I experienced a small part of it which may not be true for other parts of health care setting.
I have met many nurses that having loving kindness toward each others including the patients.I am so fortunate to work with them.Our country spends lots of money for mental health problem which creates by all of us. I wish I could do something better than going to work and make a tiny bit different. I want to make a big different to human kind.

I am currently working in 2 jobs in 3 places. One in the hospital ICU,of course,and another one in community looking after ventilator dependent babies and children. I have been doing the second job for nearly a year. I really love working with kids. They are such adorable and beautiful creatures. Everyday I work with them I just love to be with them and play with them. I talked about how adorable they are to my kids until recently my daughter told me ” mummy why you always talk about those little babies?” I don’t want to go to school ,I want to be home with mummy”. She wants to be a baby then gets treated like one.

My job with baby is not difficult but not easy. We were trained to use the portable ventilator for a few hours, not hard for me because most of my working life I spend time with it more than any medical equipment. A few hours with the babies
while they were in the hospital. When they were discharged home we followed them home. I work 12 hour shift . They need 24 hour nursing care, so one of our nurses is always there. It is like having the hospital at home. In the room has a cot, ventilator , pulse oxymeter, suction machine, emergency kit etc. We look after a baby and also helping family to settle. If the family is not happy, the nurse gets in trouble. A few nurses got cancelled. Thing like this happened in Thailand as well as I can remember when I work in the private hospital in Thailand I heard the story. The family pay money for private nurse in Thailand,but here the government pays.

Payment is good as far as I get. I do not know how can our government is able to pay lots of money to maintain services. Anyway, it is not my job to manage the budget lol. I am happy to work and do a good job. rate is $AUD 46-65 per hour. Well, I work 12 hour shift think about it. There is no holiday, no sick leave , so you can work to save then take a break. It is a normal agency rate don’t be surprised. My husband said I work one night to get paid like a manufacture worker works for a week. I cannot just finish year 12 then get the job. If high income people looking at this rate, they may just smile, they make millions$$$ a year. what the money is for anyway if we have no purpose for doing work and being here in the planet earth.