It's all about nurturing those those students and making them feel valued, as a student, but also the value of what it means to you personally as an registered nurse in aged care.
Being a clinical facilitator, I'm able to share my knowledge and skills with the students. Pass through my enthusiasm for looking after older people and the dedication that that I have towards aged care.
The benefits of working in aged care is that you develop a rapport with the residents and their families. In aged care we have our residents for longer, which means we get to know them a lot better. Even though it might be a residential aged care facility, it is their home.
So you're entering into their personal space and personal lives, and it's that continuity of looking after the same people each day professionally. It's just so rewarding.
We look after a lot of residents that have multiple co-morbidities, chronic health diseases. So you actually get a little bit of everything.
You also need to be quite clinically skilled. It's not like an acute care centre where you have a doctor or another allied health professional that's on site. Often you have to make these decisions knowing that you've got those skills and knowledge and being able to care for people in their own homes.
Just being able to see a resident smile, at the end of the day, because of something that you've done, and it may have been something so small, but it's made that person's day, so it's just so rewarding.
This video provides information on the Aged Care Nursing Clinical Placements Program, which supports nursing students with positive, high-quality clinical placements in the care and support sector (aged care, veterans’ care, and disability). During their placement, students can practice advanced clinical skills, learn about gerontological nursing, and see the complexity of care and depth of knowledge required to be an aged care nurse, while receiving specialist support by trained clinical facilitators.