Australian Nurses

Career Development in Nursing

Question 01: Identification and prioritization of learning needs

It is mandatory for all the nurses and midwives to meet the standard defined by the Continuing Professional Development. The minimum requirements for CPD are set out by this standard. The Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council has approved this standard on 31st March, 2010. This approval was also agreeable to the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law which is a National Law, and this approval has been taken into effect from 1st July 2010. According to this standard, all midwives and nurses should have to meet the CPD standards. Moreover, CPD is also directly relevant to the context of practice of midwives or nurses. However, it is in the hands of Board to allow exemptions in individual cases (Maniago, www.articlesbase.com).

Learning needs for theater nursing

Theatre nurses are those who have their primary focus on surgeries and operations. However, theatre nurses may also possess numerous specializations including ophthalmology, orthopedics, cosmetic, obstetrics, and other related fields that may require surgeries and operations. Thus, it is of immense importance for theatre nurses to identify and prioritize their learning needs as defined by the CPD (Maniago, www.articlesbase.com).

Following are the main learning needs that a theatre nurse must possess as defined by the CPD:

All the nurses should have to participate in 20 hours of continuing nursing at least, on the nurses' register of per year professional development. On the other hand, midwives should have to participate in 20 hours at least, on the midwives' register of per year professional development.

Secondly, it is also required by all the registered midwives and nurses, who hold endorsements as midwives or nurses or scheduled medicines endorsements, to complete a total of at least 10 hours per year particularly in the education which is related to their endorsement.

Another learning need that the nurses and midwives need to develop is that it would be the responsibility of the midwife or nurse to calculate that how many active learning's hours they have taken place. Moreover, one hour of CPD will be equal to one hour of active learning. Further, if the activities of CPD are equally relevant to both the professions of midwifery and nursing, then those activities could be counted in each of the portfolio of professional development (www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au).

Moving further, it is also required that the CPD should have to be relevant to the midwife or nurse's context of practice. Here, one also needs to understand that what basically is the context of practice for midwives and nurses? The answer is that, the context of practice can be defined as the conditions in which an individual midwife or nurse will take place her practice. The types of practice settings such as private practice, healthcare agency, or educational organization, are also included in this definition of context of practice. In addition to this, practice setting's locations such as rural, urban, or remote, the client's or patient's characteristics such as age, health status, and learning needs, the focus of the activities of midwifery or nursing ...