Nursing is tough

Episode number 1 of Series “Nurses”.
‘Nurses’ “was filmed by four nurses and their friends at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne to capture the real life drama of nursing from a very different perspective…their own” Nurses are: Kerryn O’Rourke - Oncology. Trish Builic - Psychiatric (to the homeless). Jane Newham - Emergency. Cassie Steward - Theatre. Ep 1. Introduction to the nurses, their fields of specialisation, views and experiences. Deals with what attracted the women to nursing in the first place and how their experience has differed from initial expectations. Examines the stereotype of nursing as ‘nice girls’ occupation proposing instead that nursing and by extension nurses are tough. Jane talks about emergency as an experience that brings you face to face with the fundamentals of life and death. Cassie speaks about her foray into nursing as something unfortunately rare for a woman brought up in the western suburbs. Kerryn talks about the sense that it was only in her third year as a registered nurse that the ‘big picture’ of what nursing demands hit her. And Trish articulates the mixed feelings involved in working with homeless psychiatric patients, of “having to force people to do something they don’t want to do, but knowing that if you don’t they end up in pain, vulnerable and traumatised”.