i will be starting work in a months time at a hospital in brisbane and they have informed me that i will have to sit a pharmacology test and a BLS, any ideas what a BLS is ? also anyone sat the pharmacology test just wondering how hard it is and what questions they asked.

also the hospital said that the starting salary was $55,500 which is around £30,000 that seems quite a lot considering i am only 2 years qualified !!!

is this correct.

many thanks
sarah

Id assume that BLS is a Basic Life Support, much like we do here. I would have thought you would have no problem with this as ur ITU trained and thought you have to have the ALS here Advanced Life Support. I have the ILS, Intermediate Life Support which just means knowing how to use the difibrilator on top of ABC.
Just get urself a good pharmacology book for nurses and start reading it
p.s. congratulations on getting 2 jobs

Iv copied this link for you which tells you as a band 5 with 2 years experience your rate will be as follows http://www.health.qld.gov.au/hrpolic...es/nursing.asp

Happy days eh lol

I'd also assume it was Basic Life Support You'd expect to have to go on that at the start of any new job, nothing to worry about! I'd imagine that the pharmacology test will be to do with drug calculations, but will be interested to hear what other people who have experience of it say.

The BLS is easy esp if uk trained,very straight forward.The pharm paper is also pretty simple,they give you a booklet with example questions and the answers then further questions to answer,dont sweat it Sarah you will walk it

ok cool, so will it be questions like as if you were doing a ward drugs round and it would say what the precribed drug was and how much and then you would say how many tablets or mls you would give ? and how many drips per minute to run an infusion at?

Yes that's it,tis also multiple choice so you have the answer anyway,trust me you will be fine,you will sit in the office for an hour or so with a cup of tea to do it,no sweat

OMG I couldn't answer that one without reading the answer written on the tongue depressor in my uniform pocket! Too used to pumps these days.
Good luck with the test.

We weren't taught drips per minute, well thats a lie, we did some token exercise in a class one day where we stood and counted how many drips fell in a minute, but not how to calculate them . Guess that was cause in Paediatrics we use pumps all the time. suppose I should go look that up

I don't think I was taught that either - or that was one of the days when I signed the register n went to the pub.
Get yourself an intelligent and keen looking student nurse. And copy the writing on her tongue depressor. LOL I'm serious they all have it.
Take it with you and when your stuck pretend that your filing your nails with it.
SORTED!!!

Best you get on it,as a paeds itu nurse with 20 years experience in the uk the drips almost caught me out

Im gonna ask a student nurse to do me a drip stick! Swear I had loads when I was a student but once qualified and working in theatres there was no need as we use pumps all the time and just program it. If I can remember rightly, it was x 15 for fluids and x 20 for blood. Or maybe other way around? O God, I will have to look that up too.
BTW, iv got a skype interview with a hospital in Victoria (Mornington Peninsula) tomorrow night. Have never used skype before and for some reason I keep thinking my computer is gonna ring, haha, imagine that lol

LOL don't even know what it is!!!
Good luck with the interview.

It was the other way around! Just checking my numeracy workbook and here is the calculation:
Flow rate (drops per min) = volume of infusion (ml) X number of drops per ml
______________________________________
time in minutes

So 1,000 ml x 20 drops per ml (clear fluid)
_____________________
6 hours (X 60 for minutes)

= 20,000 = 2,000 = 1000 = 500 = 55.555555
_____ _____ ______ ____
360 36 18 9
divide by 10 2 2

Hope this helps anyone who needs it

set up isnt how it should be but hope you get the gist of it