Colac Area Health hosted an open day for student nurses interested in joining the hospital’s 12-month graduate program.

CAH staff development educator Sue Ryan said 22 university students from areas including Melbourne, Warrnambool, Geelong, Ballarat, Portarlington and Box Hill toured Colac Area Health to get a feel for the hospital and its environment.

“We highlighted the benefits of being in a rural health service,” Ms Ryan said.

“It offers you the opportunity to consolidate a range of skills as opposed to specialising in one stream, which is more the case in metropolitan hospitals,” she said.

Ms Ryan said the hospital had five graduate nurses and would offer five further positions at the start of next year.

“It’s a supported year where they have a rotation through three areas within the hospital and they have a speciality week where they can choose to go with the paramedics, midwives, community nursing etcetera – just to get a taste of something different,” she said.

“Coupled with support from the staff development team, which gives them the opportunity to participate in education sessions depending on what department they are in.

“We offer a range of internal education sessions and we also get external facilitators to come and conduct sessions,” she said.

Ms Ryan said graduate nurses were an asset to Colac Area Health.

“It’s a great way of skilling up the workforce and hopefully we would have them become part of our long-term workforce,” she said.

This story courtesy of the Colac Herald