In the emergency department, the ‘bat phone’ is reserved for urgent referrals of incoming patients. One busy afternoon, the bat phone rang to advise that a four-year-old boy had fallen off a motorbike.* He'd ridden over a river bank and ...

There is an obvious employer expectation and condition of employment that when nurses are at work they are awake and not sleeping. After all, the employer is paying for the time that the nurse is at work. This rule does ...

Job opportunities for nurses are growing faster than the workforce as a whole, and nurses with postgraduate qualifications will reap the greatest rewards as the health industry expands and becomes more complex. The evolution of the industry is being driven ...

Queensland is known as the Sunshine State. Its hot, humid summers and cool, dry winters make it an attractive place to live. Given the beautiful climate, outdoor recreation is promoted and often includes surfing and swimming. And there are endless ...

Once a patient assumes an in-patient status in a hospital, it thereby creates a duty of care concerning protection of the patient from foreseeable acts of harm. Liability is not potentially limited to acts of harm committed by staff and/or ...

A relative latecomer to nursing, Cherie Whitbread talks comfy shoes and chili mud crab. Which hospital do you work at and what do you do there? My work encompasses research and direct client care for people with diabetes at Royal ...

The potential liability of health services, hospitals, day surgeries and clinics does not, depending on the nature of the treatment or care provided, cease upon physical discharge or a patient leaving the facility. If any treatment or care has had ...

A number of human factors influence the way managers within organisations address patient safety concerns. One is wilful blindness. The phenomenon of wilful blindness has been described by Heffernan (2011, p. 3) as “shirking” the “opportunity for knowledge, and a ...

Anxiety is the most common mental disorder in Australia. It is estimated that one in seven people in any 12-month period will be affected by an anxiety disorder. The disorder presents in many forms, including generalised anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress ...

History tells us that intentional injury is not a new phenomenon: in 1860 a French pathologist Auguste Ambroise Tardieu wrote a forensic study on the cruelty and the ill treatment of children. While the terminology has evolved over time to ...