Welcome to episode eighteen of the Ausmed Handover podcast – Betty Jeffrey: ‘The Girls on the Beach’ Welcome to this special edition of the Ausmed Handover podcast. In this episode you are going to hear a rare piece of history taken from the personal account of Australian war nurse, Betty Jeffrey. Held as a prisoner of war in World War Two on Banka Island alongside the famous Vivian Bullwinkel, the two were instrumental in the formation of the Nurses Memorial Centre, dedicated to honouring nurses past, present and future. 2017 marks the 75th anniversary of the infamous Banka Island Massacre. On the 16th of […]

Welcome to episode seventeen of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: The Killer Beside Me Welcome to episode seventeen of the Ausmed Handover podcast. Nurses have always been good at self-regulation, and when someone’s performance is identified as being sub-optimal, they are quick to raise their concerns with management. But what happens when management ignores these concerns? In this episode I’ll be telling a true crime story, and how the failure of several hospitals to act on the concerns of their nurses led to one man becoming the worst serial killer the world has ever known. Transcript INTRO (00:10) Hello and welcome […]

Welcome to episode sixteen of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: Ten Ordinary Nurses Who Were Simply… Extraordinary! Welcome to episode sixteen of the Ausmed Handover podcast. In this episode, I’ll be telling the stories of ten ordinary, everyday nurses who wrote their own extraordinary histories, yet are virtually unknown to the nursing profession today. Transcript THEME (00:10) Hello and welcome to the Ausmed Handover Podcast. My name is Darren Wake, and in this episode, I’m going to tell the stories of ten seemingly ordinary nurses who did some pretty extraordinary things. And I bet you’ve never heard of any of them. […]

Welcome to episode fifteen of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: How to Find Meaning in Your Work Welcome to episode fifteen of the Ausmed Handover podcast. For so many nurses, their career will follow a familiar trajectory. As a new graduate, their world is exciting and driven by the challenges associated with applying their theoretical knowledge to a practical context, but over time, the unrelenting pressure, absence of positive feedback, and lack of clearly satisfying outcomes, leaves many nurses jaded, frustrated and frequently questioning if what they do has any real meaning. In this episode, I’ll be looking at how one […]

Welcome to episode fourteen of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: Are You Prepared to End Someone’s Life? Welcome to episode fourteen of the Ausmed Handover podcast. Worldwide, the pro-euthanasia lobby is slowly but surely gaining traction, and in many jurisdictions, it is only a matter of time before voluntary euthanasia is deemed to be a lawful act. But there are issues associated with this debate that are being wholly ignored by the various stakeholders, and these have direct and deeply unsettling implications for the nursing profession. Transcript INTRODUCTION (00:10) Hello and welcome to the Ausmed Handover podcast. My name is Darren […]

Welcome to episode thirteen of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: Bullying in Nursing – What’s it Like to be a Bully? Welcome to episode thirteen of the Ausmed Handover podcast. We are constantly told that bullying has reached epidemic proportions within the nursing profession on a global basis. But the statistics don’t tell us anything about exactly who the bullies are. So just what are the attributes of the archetypal bully, where do they lurk, and what’s it like to be one? Transcript INTRODUCTION (00:10) Hello and welcome to the Ausmed handover podcast. My name is Darren Wake, and in this […]

Welcome to episode twelve of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: Why I Think Nursing is the Most Unreasonable Job… Ever! Welcome to episode twelve of the Ausmed Handover podcast. Sometime in our deep, dark past, society asked nurses to take on a role that, under scrutiny, simply can’t be done. That is, when one looks at the expectations of the nursing profession, they are completely unreasonable. Yet nurses rise up to the challenge of the impossible every day. How and when did this happen, and just why do nurses persist in trying to meet the unreasonable expectations of an impossible […]

Welcome to episode eleven of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: How Much is a Nurse Worth? Welcome to episode eleven of the Ausmed Handover podcast. This episode is all about money. I’ll be calculating how much a nurse is worth at their most elemental level, how much a nurse actually costs to employ, how much a nurse can actually charge for their services, and, ultimately, what the cultural monetary value of a nurse actually is, which is the real question we should all be asking. Transcript Hello, this is the Ausmed handover podcast, my name is Darren Wake and in […]

Welcome to episode ten of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: My Extraordinary Life: Graduate Nurse Welcome to episode ten of the Ausmed Handover podcast. Graduate nurses are the lifeblood of the profession, yet many of us will have forgotten what it was like to be a novice nurse thrust into a very high stress environment and expected to learn ‘on the fly’. In this episode of the Handover podcast, we will be talking to three amazing nurses who are currently on graduate or transitional programs about their experiences. This is an exciting and highly revealing episode both for those listeners […]

Welcome to episode nine of the new Ausmed Handover podcast: Doctor Google has Arrived: What does this Mean for the Nursing Profession? Welcome to episode nine of the Ausmed Handover podcast. The internet- as we know it – has been around for over three decades now, and if you are a ‘user’, then companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Google have accumulated an extraordinary amount of very personal information about you. So much so that in early 2016 Microsoft, Google and an independent medical team all claimed that by analysing very large amounts of global browsing data they were […]