Nursing a career with children

Holli Lennox

Working with amazing but very ill children is one of the career highlights for Holli Lennox.

“My love of children was one of the reasons I wanted to get into nursing,” says the 22 year old Griffith Bachelor of Nursing student, who has just been offered a full-time job as a nurse at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital.

“It has been really exciting to be offered this position after all the hard work I’ve put in, both on the Griffith degree and previously during my time as an enrolled nurse.

“I originally completed an 18 month diploma in nursing at TAFE as I was unsure about nursing as a career. But once I had made up my mind about it, I was really keen to become a full registered nurse and therefore take on a much broader scope of practice. It was fantastic to find that I could go straight to Griffith and just complete the second and third years of the degree to do that.

“I admit I was a little bit scared about attending seminars where other students had a good grounding in the scientific subjects and knew the meaning of terms such as ‘lecture capture,’ but I soon met some great friends and the lecturers were very supportive.”

A range of placements

As part of the degree, Holli also had the opportunity to do a range of placements in both hospitals and within the community.

“Working alongside the school nurse in a local school was really fun, but it was during my time in the oncology unit of a children’s ward that I found nursing the most rewarding. I got to know some really amazing children, who although they may have been having very debilitating treatments for cancer, were still resilient despite their plight. One minute they could be throwing up and the next they would be asking me to help them with their colouring in!”Preview post

Now Holli will start work as a general nurse, rotating around different medical areas as the PA Hospital requires. “I’m really looking forward to the challenge of gaining a broad knowledge of so many different areas of nursing,” she says.

For more information on programs in nursing and midwifery at Griffith, please visithttp://www.griffith.edu.au/health/school-nursing-midwifery