In this unit, you will have the opportunity to practice nursing care in the medical-surgical environment. You will apply the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) Registered nurse standards for practice (2016). You will continue to explore the importance of the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards (2017) to all nursing practice in Australia and use the Patient Safety Competency Framework (PSCF) (Levett-Jones et al., 2017) in your practice as a nursing student. You will be expected to identify risk and recognise and respond appropriately to the deteriorating patient in the simulated and clinical environment. You will work within your scope of practice using the decision-making framework (DMF) (NMBA, 2020). You are required to participate in a compulsory three (3) day residential school prior to attending professional experience placement for this unit. This unit includes a 120 hour block professional experience placement in a medical-surgical environment. You must meet specific mandatory health, safety and security requirements to be eligible to attend each professional experience placement. Professional experience placements may be limited in your community and you may be placed in other locations. Please be prepared financially and personally to cover the costs to relocate for placements. Due to the limited availability of placements, some block placements have start and/or end dates that fall outside standard term dates.

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Feedback from SUTE comments

I liked the subject how there was a residential school and then placement/ANSAT and no other assessments to complete. This made it easy to focus on the placement and other subjects without the stress of having a written assessment as well.

Continue to focus on skills acquisition and practice in residential schools without overburdening with written assessments.

Feedback from SUTE comments

Not to any fault of the educators at residential school as they were absolutely fabulous, but the amount of content crammed into such a short period of time was impossible to learn and for them to teach.

Content within the PEP 2 residential school will be revised. Clinical assessments on Day 3 are being removed to allow students more time to learn and practice.

Feedback from SUTE comments

We need more advanced notice for residential school and placements. I feel there isn't enough time after we get the dates to be able to book accommodation (for those who aren't local) and time away from jobs.

This is being looked into to make it more student focussed.