Pulse - 13

NOTREDAME.EDU.AU 3 A Flurry of Florences Diploma of Nursing students on the Broome Campus celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. BROOME CAMPUS Postgraduate students undertaking OSCE. NURSING NEWS Graduate Diploma of Perioperative Cohort. Postgraduate 2020 is off to a busy start as new enrolments continue to come in across the full range of programs offered. After much work with our partner facilities, this semester has seen an expansion in the Graduate Diploma of Perioperative Nursing to include Registered Nurses working in the post anaesthetic care unit (recovery room) as well as those in the actual theatres. This broadens the expertise of the perioperative nurse and provides workforce flexibility. We are proud of our partnerships with industry and were thrilled to see SwanCare recently receive an Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) award for innovation in service or design. Part of their successful submission included the initiative to attract and develop graduate RNs. SwanCare saw an increase in the level of care required for residents and the need to deliver more complex care at an acute level. They were looking at how they could engage graduate nurses into the aged care industry to be able to meet these increasing complex care needs. SwanCare approached the school and engaged in discussions on how they could look at promoting aged care to graduate nurses. The result of this discussion was a graduate nurse program where graduate nurses are engaged to complete post graduate studies and attain their Graduate Certificate in Clinical Nursing while working a number of shifts per week in residential care facilities. This program is now in its third year and has contributed not only to award success, but retention of graduates as permanent RNs at SwanCare. We look forward to another productive year in the postgraduate arena. Julie Dally Assistant Postgraduate Coordinator Postgraduate Mental Health OSCE The postgraduate mental health courses currently being presented at Notre Dame, Fremantle, includes a clinical assessment component: an Objective Structured Clinical Examination, known as the ‘OSCE’. This assessment involves actors (undergraduate students) who play the part of patients with mental illness. Postgraduate students are then able to undertake a live psychiatric assessment with an interactive patient. The OSCE as an assessment has been available for a number of years, but only recently incorporated into a number of different postgraduate mental health courses at Notre Dame. The OSCE is in two parts in the first part, as pictured above, the student is observed undertaking the assessment. The assessment requires the use of advanced communication and questioning skills in order to understand the patients concerns and to obtain a holistic understanding of the patient’s illness. This part of the assessment takes 20 minutes. The second part of the assessment is written documentation. Students have one hour to document the findings, complete a psychiatric formulation of the patient and provide a plan of care for the patient being assessed. Feedback from students has, to date, been positive with regards to the use of these skills in practice, which is an essential part of mental health nurse practice. With this in mind, the postgraduate mental health team are planning to undertake a study to measure the impact of the OSCE on the practice of nurses working in mental health. Phil Daplyn RN MN CMHN AMHP & the PG Team