the derbys

Hi I am hoping to be in Perth by June depending on the house sale. I have been a nursing assistant for 22 yrs at my local hospital and wondering if anybody knows if Perth hospitals have N. A s? if so what hospitals can I apply to?

Thanks

JRB

Hi there, the main hospitals in Perth are Royal Perth, King Edward, Sir Charles Gardiner, Fremantle and Hollywood (private)St John of God, Subiaco and Murdoch (private), The Mount (private) and Shenton Park (rehabilitation) and another childrens hospital (sorry forgotten name). You can look for jobs on government website. Can't remember URL but if you type in WA state jobs into google I'm sure it would come up. You may find they are quite fussy about having a level 3 certificate (NVQ equivalent) but there is ways of getting in. There are also alot of aged care facilities which are run by charities such as baptist care, catholic care etc. I used to work for disability services and they have many group homes and hostels where the staff are called client assistants. I also used to work for a nursing agency on the admin side but this one didn't really emlpoy NA's. Good luck with the job hunt.

cbriggs

Hi, As far as I know there are mainly qualified nurses but they do have healthcare assistants, just not as many as in the UK. I have a friend who is looking to move to Perth as a nursing assistant however it seems to be proving quite difficult as as far as I know he will not be able to get sponsored therefore no visa. How have you managed to be able to go? I'm hoping there is a way that we haven't yet found. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

eddie007

We have Personal Care Assistants and Personal Care Assistant Advanced Practice (Aged Care) at our place... propbably the nearest thing you will get to NA in UK

Our PCAAP's are medication competent (within our local policies & guidelines), can do simple wound dressings, Peg feeds and catheter care, and (as from tomorrow) ACFI assessments ..... as well as audits and documentation, they play an integral part in mentoring trainees and we want to develop them so that they can 'manage' the floor (with support of RN).... One of our PCAAPs audits and assesses and orders all of our continence aids... (pads) ...

I think it depends on where you go and what you want as well as what the local 'management'/ nursing team want from their staff.... The role of PCA is having to evolve and develop in response to the acute nursing shortage here in WA... we are all working smarter... and harder

Having said that I also know places where RNs spend all morning making breakfasts

Choose wisely when you get here!

JRB

Sorry to sound cynical but do the PCA's get better pay for these enhanced duties? I hope so. It makes me mad when nurses are given more and more responsibility and do not get better pay. Also I wonder about the standard of the training. My mum retired as a practice nurse as slowly she was given more and more responsibilities and ended up seeing more patients than the Dr and did not get any extra pay or support. She took early retirement eventually. I am an ex psych nurse myself so do have experience of this. I hope it's not a cost cutting exercise whereby PCA's are doing the job of a trained nurse.

From a cynical ex nurse

eddie007

Yes



As for PCAs doing the 'job' of a trained nurse I would never say that a PCA/NA who has not had the level of education and exposure that an RN has during their training was able to 'do an RNs job' They haven't got the grounding...

However they can quite ably take on tasks which have traditionally been the remit of RNs.... just as NAs in the UK have for many years.

RNs should welcome this support, because it allows them to get on with the clinically skilled nursing assessment/planning/care they should be concentrating on...

For PCAAP to succeed RNs have got to learn to delegate whilst remaining accountable and there in lies the rub, I'm not sure they all know how to do that yet...