Welcome to North Queensland.   This page was last updated on 24 July 1999.

Well, Nationalisation has happened.   It seems somehow important that this should happen on the twenty fifth anniversary of CACCN.   It reminds me that about 12 years ago when I was a member of the NSW CNSA (Clinical Nurse Specialist Assocciation) and we merged with CACCN - we went through a similar process and many had doubts and misgivings, but we survived and got stronger.  Why?   Because we are a proud bunch of Nurses!

I see Nationalisation as a strength - but only so long as Critical Care Nurses in this country recognise the diverse nature of acute and critical care nursing that happens in this country, and that they can work toward strengthening our role (in its many forms) as essential members of the critical care team.  I think that this was highlighted through the presentation of nursing papers at the State Conference up here.   The nature of the presentations were quite diverse and I was quite proud to have given these people the opportunity to present their work.   I was particularly impressed by a young woman from an isolated community north of Cairns who presented a paper on the scary part of nursing - working in an isolated Emergency Department and expected to be everything for everyone who walks (or is carried) through the doors.   I congratulate Rebecca Garside, and her many and widespread colleagues for they're work.

In recognition of all those nurses who work in rural and remote areas, I say let's forget the personal professional gains and look at our professional strand and the challenges that we face.

At the Townsville General Hospital we are working toward better management of 'back protection' programmes for our nurses.   This is in line with the so called "No Lift Policy", which has been instituted by the QNU, but which we all should be supporting.   I believe that our professional organisation should be supporting this to the hilt.

We have also investigated and piloted a critical care nursing acuity scoring system (TISS) with some very encouraging results.   If the data from this type of system could be standardised and distributed on a national level we could develop staffing and management standards streets ahead of our current ad-hoc systems allow (I'm presuming that the rest of you also face skill-mix and staffing problems on a day to day basis depending on the admission cache).

That's all for now Caz - but you can see that this can be a great forum.   I will try to do something about the pop-up ads as they can be quite distracting!!

We'll get on with this if you all agree.

Gary