The COVID-19 pandemic placed most of us in unique circumstances. For nursing student Alannah Dragani, who was undertaking a midwifery placement in 2020, it meant situations like wearing full PPE while present during a woman’s second stage of labour, because a woman’s laboured breathing put her at more risk of catching or spreading COVID.
“Just imagine, being in a world of pain, trying to bring a baby into the world,” she says. “And you’ve got all these people where you can’t even see their faces.”
When Dragani started her double degree in nursing and midwifery at La Trobe University in 2019, she felt excited at the thought of being able to make a positive impact on people’s lives.
“I was very passionate about supporting women and their families through vulnerable times and through a new journey,” she tells upstart. Now, in her last year of study, Dragani remains excited, but she is also scared and nervous about her future.
Although COVID-19 has highlighted how critical nurses are for our healthcare system to function, Dragani is about to enter an industry where 78 percent of nurses reported feeling burnt out, with 23 percent planning to leave their job, according to the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association (APNA). Dragani says she and her peers frequently question what they are getting themselves into.
“Are we just setting ourselves up for a career just to be burnt out?” she asks.
Because of lockdowns, she has spent most of her degree online. Student placements were also cancelled, disrupting what is essentially the nuts and bolts of Dragani’s degree, where students are required to complete 800 hours of placement in hospitals, as experience is crucial in their learning.
“You can learn all of the theory, but you don’t really grasp it until you’re doing it”, says Dragani.
“There’s a lot of nerves about not knowing enough because everything we’ve done is online, and then the first time we actually practice something is going to be on a real person”.
Some students have completed their entire degree online, but Lauren Zarb, Senior Lecturer in Nursing at La Trobe University, says they are more prepared compared to the students who had their learning disrupted halfway through their degree due to their experience being on the frontline during the pandemic.
“What I’ve found working with those students, is that they have had a lot more exposure to healthcare,” she says. “A large number of those students have been working to address those workforce shortages. So in some way, they have become very resilient,” she tells upstart.
“But we acknowledge that it has been an incredibly difficult time for nurses everywhere and also for nursing students”.
While the pandemic has revealed a newfound appreciation for nurses as they became frontline workers during lockdowns, it was a workforce that was already under extreme pressure years before COVID-19. This also means that students who are set to graduate will be thrown into a profession where the demands have changed significantly from the past.
“We go on placement and it’s so evident of how everyone is burnt out, working overtime and double shifts and if they’re not, there’s pressure to work double shifts,” says Dragani.
It also means that it may be harder to attract people in the profession. This is why the Federal Government has cut the costs of nursing degrees by 40 percent in 2021, and the Victorian Government has recently offered to make tuition free for nursing and midwifery students who enrol in 2023, and 2024. While Dragani is happy for future students, she couldn’t help feeling that it was unfair for current students like her.
“It would be nice if something could be done for the students who studied during the pandemic,” says Dragani. “It’s a bit sad that it’s only for a couple of years, they kind of just put a timeline on it.”
Dragani has been working a casual job to pay her own bills, which along with making up for placement hours that have been cancelled or postponed due to lockdowns, resulted in her working for 15 days straight at times.
While the $16,000 dollar scholarship will attract more students to study nursing, Zarb says that making sure nurses remain in the workforce is also important.
“I think there needs to be a greater focus on well-being,” she says. “There might be a way to attract more nurses, but it’s keeping nurses that’s really problematic because it’s really difficult work.
“If we can empower our nursing students and teach them about the importance of recognising burnout, and looking after their own psychological well-being, then we’ll be in a much better place as a profession.”
Although Dragani has faced times of immense pressure throughout the years, she felt that it was worth the hardship as she nears the end of her degree, and there were unique lessons that the pandemic offered.
“It taught us how to be resilient, and we have first-hand experience in infection control,” she says.
The challenges, like attending a birth in full PPE, never stopped Dragani, now a Registered Undergraduate Student of Nursing at Joan Kirner Women’s & Children’s Hospital, from doing her job and supporting the woman in labour.
“I put myself in the woman’s position and thought it would be so frightening, but that the same time, you get to build this relationship with this woman throughout her whole labour and it’s even more special when you get to be there for the birth. Even though you’re fully dressed, head-to-toe in PPE, the connection you can still form with people you are caring for is beautiful.”
Photo: Supplied by Alannah Dragani
Article: Sunehra Ahmed is a second year Media and Communications (Journalism) student. You can follow her on twitter on @SunehraAhmed1