Amanda Spencer - Ward Nurse

Amanda Spencer wasn’t sure what to expect when she joined Southern Cross Invercargill in 2003.  A recent nursing graduate from Invercargill’s Southern Institute of Technology, she’d just completed a one-year programme in a Perth hospital, dividing her time between surgical and mental health.

“I didn’t know a lot about Southern Cross, having spent my training placements in public hospitals. But I love challenges - I thrive on them. It was actually good to come here without quite knowing what it was going to be like."

"The environment here is excellent - the facilities are first rate and I get good support from my colleagues and management, who encourage us to be ourselves.  “Nursing brings a lot of responsibility and accountability, so it can be very stressful at times. Your attitude is the key to enjoying it – basically you choose what sort of day you’re going to have.”

Amanda’s role as a ward nurse includes preparing patients for theatre, monitoring their recovery post-operatively, planning patients’ discharges and community support programmes.  She has also taken on responsibility for maintaining and developing the hospital’s “care pathways”.  These pathways map a recommended course of care for each procedure, and this job entails tasks such as updating the pathways to keep the care current, contact with surgeons to help to maintain different surgeons' preferences and educating staff about them.

“As a ward nurse you get to see people at their most vulnerable. You can argue that we all wear "masks" in our daily lives and even with our families, but when you’re sick those masks slip away and what’s left is the real self.

When you’re caring for patients you have the opportunity to build a real rapport with a broad range of people – all ages, all professions. And you get to deal with all aspects of their character and personality – not just their physical, but also their emotional and spiritual sides.”

Amanda has also been preceptoring (a combination of training and mentoring) a new graduate throughout this year. “Preceptoring has been a great challenge for me as I have had to constantly give evidence for the way I practice. I wanted to be an example of ‘best practice’ and so it has certainly kept me on my toes!  I feel blessed to have the opportunity to be part of such a privileged profession and to be able to work with some of the most fantastic people who set such a high standard for me to follow.”