extralove0607@gmail.com When I first started nursing in Australia, I had a fairly linear idea of what career progression looked like. You work as a staff nurse. You build experience. You move toward management, or education, or a senior clinical role. Up. That was the direction I assumed success pointed. What I found in Australian nursing was … Read more
The hardest part of work-life balance as a nurse isn’t the hours. It’s the fact that when the shift ends, your mind doesn’t always clock off with it. You drive home replaying the patient you’re worried about. You lie awake wondering if something was missed. You walk through the front door carrying the weight of … Read more
Early in my nursing in Australia, I wrote notes the way I’d always written them. Descriptive. Impressionistic. Things like “patient appears confused” or “seems unsettled this morning.” And then I learned something that changed how I documented forever: in Australia, your clinical notes are a legal document. Not just a record. A legal document — … Read more
I walked onto the ward for the first time and felt like I understood almost nothing. Not because my English had suddenly disappeared. Because the English spoken in an Australian hospital ward is not the English that is tested in IELTS. It is faster, thicker with accent, layered with clinical shorthand, full of cultural references … Read more
Before I worked in aged care, I thought of nursing in terms of problems to solve. A patient comes in. You assess, you treat, you monitor, you discharge. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. The goal is recovery — or at least stabilisation. The clinical framework is built around diagnosis and outcome. … Read more
When I started nursing in Australia, I already had experience. I knew how to take obs, manage a patient load, respond to deterioration. The clinical skills weren’t the shock. The culture was. Coming from a nursing background where the expectation was to be fast, to not make mistakes, and to handle everything without asking for … Read more
Nursing essentials for student nurses — this is the list I wish someone had handed me on day one. Hi everyone, welcome back! It’s ChristianNurseMom here. ✨ Whenever I look back at the time I first started my nursing placements—and later, my very first RN shifts here in Australia—I always smile, but I also remember … Read more
My devotional time happens in the car. Not in a quiet room with a Bible and a journal and a hot cup of tea. In the car, on the way to the hospital, with worship music on and the shift ahead of me. That is where I gather myself. That is where I hand the … Read more
There was a shift where a patient died alone. I had done everything I could. The care was good — I know that. But they went without family, without anyone who loved them in the room, and there was nothing I could do to change that. The call bell was already ringing from somewhere else. … Read more
I pray for my patients quietly. Internally. Without saying a word out loud. Not because the prayer is less real that way — but because the people I care for come from every background, every belief system, every relationship with faith imaginable. Some are deeply religious. Some want nothing to do with God. Some are … Read more