After graduating in 2012 as a registered nurse from the University of Newcastle, Catherine Ivanfy spent a graduate year at the Mater Hospital Newcastle rotating through medical toxicology, oncology and post-surgical wards. Just seven years later she is mentoring graduates herself as a clinical nurse educator at Westmead Hospital.

The Lamp spoke to Catherine about how the new graduate program works, and how it helped her build her nursing career.

How would you describe the new graduate program?

The thing about the new graduate program in any hospital is that you’ve got a different role to more experienced nurses: you’re not expected to be an expert nurse straight away, but you are supported to get those skills over the year.

The Mater was really good and let us choose two out of three rotations. I chose to do a rotation in a medical toxicology ward, which is also combined with geriatric patients and dementia patients. I also did a rotation in the surgical ward and in oncology.

What were some of the things that made your new graduate program so successful?

They say that the new graduate year is one of the hardest years in nursing because you don’t have the skills yet, so you have to start from scratch, but meeting all the experienced nurses along the way that helped me get those skills and accrue the little bits of knowledge to be the best nurse you can be, was just really good. I still keep up with the nurses who mentored me when I was starting out. There are things they have said that stick in my mind.

How did the year help you transition into the role of a nurse?

When I did my new graduate year, I knew I wanted to be an intensive care specialty nurse, but they don’t let you do that as a new grad because it is a bit too acute; you need to  build fundamental skills first. The rotations I did really helped me with my goal: the toxicology ward gave me quite good grounding and skills in managing confused patients, which you do get a lot in ICU, and the surgical ward helped as well because of things you are managing post-surgery in ICU. And the Mater intensive care deals with lots of oncology patients, so that was really helpful in building my career as an intensive care nurse.

What did you do after the graduate program?

In my second year after my new grad program, with the guidance of Joanne Purdue (mentor), I was able to move into intensive care. So over the last couple of years I have been specialising in that area. Just over a year ago I transitioned to nurse education at Westmead, and having a foundation in all of the skills I developed in my graduate year helped me to do that. At Westmead they have opened up a mixed medical ward, so it does everything, but because of my background in intensive care I can manage a wide variety of patients, so I found it easy to transition.

Can you describe your work now as a clinical nurse educator?

I support the new graduate nurses when they come out, so one of my priorities is making sure they have fundamental skills to be good nurses, and then move on to whatever speciality they want to. I also support other nurses on the ward to gain higher and more acute skills. Having a really good CNE makes the difference between you getting the skills and struggling to get the skills.

What are some tips or tricks you could give someone starting their new graduate program?

Keep an open mind because you will see things that will be quite confronting that you don’t expect to see. Don’t be too harsh on yourself: the new grads are the baby nurses, so you can’t expect to have the same skills as someone who has been doing nursing for eight years or 20 or 30 years. They say it takes someone three months to get used to a new workplace so that is the first quarter of your new graduate rotation.

Be friends with your other new grads, be a good team member with them because they are the ones who will support you through the first year. And don’t compete with each other: everyone is going to have a different experience and everyone is going to go through different wards at a different pace. Try to soak up the education and just try to have some fun and enjoy learning.

Everything you see in the work-place will teach you a lesson so just try to learn a lesson from each clinical experience you have, and from patients and other staff interactions.

Final year nursing students can apply for the 2021 Grad Start program through NSW Health. Visit www.health.nsw.gov.au/nursing/employment and look out for the 2021 application when it becomes available.

NSW Health says “GradStart is highly competitive and it is anticipated that more people will apply than there are positions available, so it is important to be well prepared and organised.”

www.health.nsw.gov.au/nursing/employment