Hospital welcomes new critical nurses

A GRADUATE program for critical care nurses was launched at Bendigo Hospital on Monday.

Twelve registered nurses will rotate through the Bendigo Hospital’s emergency department, and intensive care, short stay observation, and acute treatment units over the next year.

Director of nursing, ambulatory and critical care, Kate Fuller, said it became clear during COVID that the health service needed to start its own critical care program.

“We realised over the pandemic we needed to do things a little differently in regard to recruiting and retaining staff,” she said.

Ms Fuller said the RNs will get the necessary training, practice and support to set them up long term at Bendigo Health.

“We are offering a program that will introduce them to a full 12 months in the critical care space with the aim for them to undertake post graduate studies here in the future,” she said.

“These nurses will be thoroughly trained spending the majority of their time in the emergency department and undertaking patient assessments.”

One of the RNs who accepted a grad position was Shelby Trigg and she said she was “ecstatic” to secure a spot.

Ms Trigg also said a career in critical care was a natural fit with her mother being a nurse and her father working in emergency services.

“My dad is a fire brigade captain who loves adrenaline,” she said. “So, the two paths kind of collided and I found myself really interested in the critical care stream.”

A general graduate program was also announced with 22 more registered nurses accepting positions that will see them rotate through inpatient wards, community nursing, and patient services.