What roles did you take on with RNS in Australia?
Duncan: I worked as an Assistant in Nursing in Aged and Acute Care settings.
Emma: I worked in Emergency, Intensive Care, Medical and Surgical wards. We had work within a week of finding and joining RNS.
How does the UK health system (NHS) compare with the Aussie system?
The Aussies look after you more. There are more staff, facilities and resources. The facilities are cleaner and there are definitely more training opportunities for nurses. England tends to be more autonomous; the NHS expect you to fund your own education in your own time. In Australia employers are more likely to part or wholly fund education for things like your ‘Advanced Life Support’.
Another big comparison is the number of nurses Australia has in any given shift; double to that in the NHS. It was typical in the UK to run around 12 hours with no breaks – so we feel pretty chilled here, we’ve got time to do the job.
What other benefits are there nursing in Australia?
You get to surf everyday! We enjoy the lifestyle here; on our days off we go to the beach instead of going shopping and to the pub. In England opportunities for nursing work on the coast are rare and it’s a 5 hour drive to the beach.
Emma you’ve worked on contract before; what are the benefits of agency nursing with RNS?
I was on contract in Manly, Sydney and was working the shifts everyone else didn’t want to work. I decided to go with an agency so that I could choose when I worked. This gave us the freedom to get away if we wanted.
RNS were really friendly and made us feel welcome. RNS offered better rates of pay and flexibility. When we advised that we only had one car between us, RNS accommodated this whereas other agencies just don’t know who you are and don’t cater to individual circumstances. 
Some agencies rang and hassled us 24 hours a day whereas if we told RNS we were unavailable they didn’t hassle us.
The other thing was if we needed a shift, we could trust RNS would try and find us one. We could tell that it’s a family sort of feeling and had no complaints. We felt like RNS was working for us rather than us working for them, like other agencies can make you feel. We have worked for a lot of agencies in the past and RNS have been the best.
What opportunities and experiences have been opened up for you as a result of working in Australia?
We arrived on a round the world ticket and traveled around when we got to Australia. We started in San Francisco and visited Las Vegas, Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand and then Sydney. We spent 3 months working in Sydney then got a job in Brisbane – we thought it would be good but missed the coast so much we left after 2 days and came up here (Noosa).
In Sydney we paid $280/wk for a studio apartment – here we pay $260/wk for a 2 bedroom townhouse with 3 pools! It was really easy to find a place to rent here in Noosa – in Manly we’d get the papers, rush to a place to view it whereas here we could take our pick.
Have you had any funny experiences when dealing with the difference between UK and Australian nursing cultures?
The amount of breaks you get here is amazing. Back home we worked 7.15am-10pm with one half an hour break – here you work 8 hours and get two breaks. It’s very chilled; Duncan got sent to a job where he was 10 minutes late, he was panicking and ran up the driveway, in the end everyone turned up after him!
Do you have any advice for nurses wanting to make the move from the UK to Australia?
Just do it! Definitely get out of the NHS.
We were lucky as we had been here before on holiday so we knew what to expect this time around. The first time we were really worried. Our advice is – don’t panic it’s very unlikely you are going to be eaten by a shark and while there are big spiders, they are not lurking around every corner!
I guess the only question left is….where to next?
We are moving on now to travel up to Northern Australia taking a boat for 3 weeks and then road-tripping in a campervan with Emma’s parents from Darwin to Perth. We hope to eventually return to Noosa after going home to visit family in the UK.