Just a quick note to say a big thank you for such a prompt response to my request for a record of service. I have worked for so many agencies over the years and Continental Travelnurse sticks in my mind as the best! Prompt and efficient! I continue to recommend your agency to anyone who may be traveling to the UK - keep up the good work!
Regards,
Vanessa
Thank you very much for your email. I really enjoyed working with you, too. Thank you very much for all your help and support. The staff and Leslie have been great and very efficient. Annabel did mention I can always go back to Continental Travelnurse and that is very reassuring.
I have recommended Continental Travelnurse to my colleagues and friends. I will continue to promote Continental Travel Nurse. Take care .
Hello!
It's been so long since I communicated and I am on my bended knees apologizing!!!!! I do often think of you all in the office. I haven't been to the centre of London for months so I haven't called in. I am hoping to amend this before Christmas so will let you know a day. Please give my love to all.
Gwen
Roz,
I have found the news very sad that you are leaving Continental Travelnurse. I enjoyed the time I worked in London, mainly due to the support you and Continental Travelnurse gave me. You were always there to help, let it be nursing, carrying bags or buying a bike!
Your support and contact didn't stop when I returned home to Melbourne. The messages of birthday wishes, Christmas greetings and the NMC renewal correspondence were always unexpected and happy to be received. I will miss them. Must get onto that registration now.!
Good Luck with your return to Singapore.
Thank you again for your help and support over the past years.
I will be in touch with Continental Travelnurse at the end of this year, just to see if there are any jobs for 2012.
Gail
Hi Roz,
Thank you so much for my birthday wishes. Its really lovely to know you haven't forgotten about me. So thank you.
Wow, you're heading home. Good for you. I remember how hard that decision was to make. I'm sure you will be thrilled to go home. 11 years compared to my 3 years is such a long time and 6 yrs with Continental Travelnurse, I'm sure Leslie is very sad to see you leave.
You were great whilst i was there and still are now i have gone. Feel free to keep in touch.
I wish you all the very best for your return home. Take care and travel safe.
Bianca. XXXXXXXX
Hey Roz,
I just wanted to write a short email to thank you for all your hard work and encouragement over the past 2-3 years to finally get me over here and working (at last!!). As you are no doubt currently aware, moving to another country to work is a challenging experience, but you have made the process a lot smoother for me and made sure I was well prepared to take on this challenge. Thanks for your patience with answering all my questions and for not calling me in the middle of the night (Melbourne time) to assist me through the process. Lastly, good luck, best wishes and bon voyage! I hope you find life in Singapore is exciting and that you can rediscover old friends, family and favourite places (and some Singapore Slingers) on your trip home.
Best Wishes,
David
Hello Continental TravelNurse Team,
I arrived home today to a lovely surprise. The card was thoughtful and unexpected. I wanted to acknowledge you all for your kindness and also awareness. Sometimes your office seems far from the reality of day to day life at St Thomas's. However, today you have reminded me that there is an office of thoughtful individuals supporting us along the way.
Roz, once again. Best of luck with your endeavors. You have been very supportive with me over almost four years that I have been involved with Continental. I am sure you will be missed by the team. Big Thanks for always being only a phone call away.
I do not have all the emails of the team there. Perhaps you could both send my Thanks and appreciation along.
Have a nice weekend. And Happy Birthday for your upcoming Special Days in the next 12 months.
Sarah
Hey Roz
Thanks for sending me the welcome pack etc. i'll have a read through in the next few days. The CRB arrived quickly so that is good that it has been sent off. I am almost through the online training stuff i only have 2 more to go and have booked my BSL and manual handling for thursday 14th july.
I know today is your last day so i just want to say a MASSIVE thank you to you Roz for all your help you have given me in making my dream come true and being able to come back to the UK. I look forward to meeting the team and starting work with Continental Travelnurse. I wish you all the best in the future.
Laura
"Just writing to thank you for looking after me for the last two years in the UK. You have been a good boss as well as a good friend.
"You took the trouble to help me with my visa application even though I wasn't working for you at the time. You have a good team working for you and they have been very helpful all this while.
"I have started work in the Cardiac Recovery Unit at Hammersmith Hospital.
I hope to be able to work with you again in the future."
Thank you so much for the greeting. I have to confess that at times I think about returning. My experience working in the U.K. is still one of my most memorable life changing experiences, I cannot believe I did it and still have fond memories.
Fondest regards,
Jean of Toronto
Continental was one of the best experiences of my life. I just finished my Masters of Business Admin and the contract with the BMA is promoting the use of fair trade surgical instruments with the NHS for the BMA. I am at the point now where I am considering if I should stay in the UK or head back to North America to move into something else. Does Continental place other positions such as management or short term consulting roles? If so I would love to talk to you about it! I have this position until June and then will be looking again.
I still keep in touch with [the nurses I met through Continental Travelnurse such as] Ruth, Sarah, and Kelsey Tocher - whom I knew from school and referred to you! Also, Jilly and Tracy - who is living in Hawaii. Tanya is back in Oz and married and Kristi joined the army and was actually in Afghanistan for awhile. Ali is back in Calgary and getting married this summer too and Erin is married and has two kids now. We were pretty good at keeping in touch - I still see Ruth quite a bit over here.
Please say hello to [everyone on staff] for me too!
Julianne
Nurses currently form the largest sector of health care providers, with more than three million currently registered; but few have led or even been involved in the formal policy discussions regarding the future care of patients. To address this discrepancy, the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation assembled a national panel of health care experts that has been meeting for the last two years to discuss the role of nurses in transforming the current health care system. Their final report was published last month with no less ambitious a title than “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.”
Every year, more than 100,000 Americans start dialysis. One in four of them will die within 12 months—a fatality rate that is one of the worst in the industrialized world. Oh, and dialysis arguably costs more here than anywhere else. Although taxpayers cover most of the bill, the government has kept confidential clinic data that could help patients make better decisions. How did our first foray into near-universal coverage, begun four decades ago with such great hope, turn out this way? And what lessons does it hold for the future of health-care reform?
"I am very pleased to say that Kristen has in no way lowered the standard I am learning to expect for the nurses you have provided! Personally I would be very happy to work with Kirsten should her contract be renewed. I do hope that being invited to write this reference does not mean we are to lose her just as she settles in to our team! Thanks for your support of what has been a consistently impressive band of "real nurses"!"
“There’s no law that says private health care is illegal. What there is instead is a whole bunch of laws that dampen the ability of private care providers to be parasitic on the public system.The result is an oft-illogical patchwork that has left Canadians – and to a large extent policy-makers themselves – perplexed. To wit: Physician visits are covered by medicare but the drugs they prescribe are not – unless the patient is over 65; physicians cannot bill patients but they can refer them to imaging clinics and laboratories that do; private clinics can offer knee surgery but not heart surgery; a citizen cannot jump the queue for care unless they were hurt on the job and they are the responsibility of Worker’s Compensation; homecare nursing is provided by private companies but hospital nursing is not.
“There seems to be confusion about the legitimate role of the private sector in the health system,” as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says in a recent report. That’s quite an understatement.
Brett Holmes, general secretary of the NSW Nurses Association (NSWNA), on Monday said the reform had the backing of both public hospital and community healthcare nurses.
If implemented, it would be the biggest reform of the NSW public health system in decades, he said.
"The evidence from Victoria, California and other places with minimum nurse-to-patient ratios is now in and they work and work better than any other system," he said.
The NSWNA claims the health system has been plagued by nurse shortages and poor skill mix for too long, risking patient safety....
Mr Holmes said the ratio had worked well in Victoria and would help overworked nurses to cope.
"For example, nurse-to-patient ratios have existed in Victoria for ten years and have greatly improved the health system in that state and attracted many former nurses back to the profession," he said.
"If it is good enough for the people of Victoria, it is good enough for the people of NSW.
Experts and standards groups have advocated since 1996 that tubes for different functions be made incompatible — just as different nozzles at gas stations prevent drivers from using the wrong fuel.But action has been delayed by resistance from the medical-device industry and an approval process at the Food and Drug Administration that can discourage safety-related changes.
Hospitals, tube manufacturers, regulators and standards groups all point fingers at one another to explain the delay.
Hospitalized patients often have an array of clear plastic tubing sticking out of their bodies to deliver or extract medicine, nutrition, fluids, gases or blood to veins, arteries, stomachs, skin, lungs or bladders.
Much of the tubing is interchangeable, and with nurses connecting and disconnecting dozens each day, mix-ups happen — sometimes with deadly consequences.
One advocate for change said it best: “Nurses should not have to work in an environment where it is even possible to make that kind of mistake,” said Nancy Pratt, a senior vice president at Sharp HealthCare in San Diego who is a vocal advocate for changing the system. “The nuclear power and airline industries would never tolerate a situation where a simple misconnection could lead to a death.”
“I always appreciate hearing nice things from people I've helped, getting cards and thank you letters, but I'm not special," says Lucy Jay Bellinger, who works at Kingston Hospital. "I'm a nurse — I'm supposed to help people.”
Her father, John, said he was incredibly proud of his daughter.
“It's not a job, with her, it's a passion,” he said. “She would stay at the hospital all day and night if she could just to help people.
“She is a hero and she deserves the credit. She has helped so many people outside the house that it's almost like this is a second place of work for her.”
The ITU at St. Thomas's is the busiest ITU I have ever worked in and I have to say in terms of work load it is also the hardest I have worked in. But if you are willing and very keen to put your hand up and put your best foot forward you will learn so much. I miss ITU at "Tommies" so much. I made great friends and learnt so much -- so much more than I ever imagined -- but I worked bloody hard and put in long hours.
When I first started it was difficult to settle in as a new member of staff. I think that's because they don't know you and have so many untrained ITU staff that they want to check you out first. It's very stressful [for them] not knowing if a new member of staff is going to need to be carried or not, especially with how busy it can get sometimes. I personally found it great once I settled in, which didn't take too long for me.
From my point of view, if you're willing to work hard and potentially be used a little, maybe not intentionally but occasionally miss one of your breaks -- which I often chose to do as my patients were often the sickest on the unit -- you will enjoy your time there. It is frustrating, but so are all jobs. The main thing is to not go there thinking the work is like home, because it isn't. And that is probably the main key point to stress. The nursing union in OZ is pretty strong and has done a great job to get the working conditions we have. But the working conditions in the UK are not so great. The thing i liked best at Tommies is the working relationship with the Medical team; I felt my opinion was valued slightly more over there.
-- Bianca
So lovely to get an e-mail from you. I have been very remiss in not getting in contact before now and like you, I don't know where the last year has gone. Not a day goes by when I don't think of wanting to be back in Cheltenham. I just loved it so much and would very much like to return maybe next year. I have resigned myself to being in NZ this year as I have had two more grand-daughters this year -- four grand-daughters now in total!!!!! I want to spend this year with them and also I am re-decorating the house. Lots to do but I so miss the life I was having this time last year. -- Phillipa
