Nurse
A calling to help people resulted in this nursing graduate completing her degree in quick time
There are few people who’d have a visit to hospital in their top 10 list of things to do. It’s up there with visiting dentists and Christmas with the in-laws. But nurse Jade Larosa thrives on the challenge of making the experience as smooth as possible for patients.
Larosa, who finished her nursing studies in February, was initially drawn to the profession because she wanted to make a positive difference in other people’s lives.
She began a Bachelor of Nursing at University of Tasmania at the age of 30 in 2004. Now, just two years on, she is a qualified nurse and joint recipient of a Student Achievement Award, presented as part of the 2006 Australian Nursing Awards in early May.
“I was older than most going through the degree, and I felt I didn’t need the long holidays,” she says. “I wanted to get out there and start working.”
When Larosa started the final component of the course — work experience at St Vincent’s Private Hospital in Darlinghurst — she already knew she had a job waiting for her there when she completed her studies.
Larosa wanted to work at St Vincent’s Private because it offers a support network for graduate nurses, including a dedicated nurse educator in every ward in the hospital. “I get the opportunity to work with the best nurses and the best specialists here,” she says.
“As a nurse you learn not only from books but also from the people who you work with. To have a nurse educator on every ward is an opportunity that I didn’t want to pass up.”
She says a nurse’s greatest responsibility is to be a strong and comforting point of contact between the patient and the doctor.
“One of the most important roles for any nurse is to be the patient’s advocate. We support them through an environment that’s really foreign to them,” she says. “It’s easy to become caught up in the anatomical language and forget that these people don’t understand. The nurse’s job is to translate it into something that they will understand.”
