Well then, time has moved on but I've been without Internet access so I'm a bit behind in updating you all.
I managed to get a place to live and moved in on Sunday, starting work on Monday - four 12hour shifts!
CCU at Auckland city hospital is a 22 bedded unit, but splits the staffing into 11 acute beds and 11 step down beds. A major difference that I'm still getting used to is that all the patients are in single rooms. The central monitoring area is in a room so the patients seem very far away.
It has been very easy settling and it is very similar to the CCU I'm used to. My second shift staff had to move to another ward that was short staffed, that day the charge nurse had to argue over the appropriateness of an admission. I've also noticed that infection control nurses are the same the world over. The unit is quite busy with several admissions and discharges in a day and a fair few procedures are done. There are 3 cath labs an an EP lab with lists morning and afternoon in all the labs.
The nursing team here is very multicultural but my second shift the English nurses outnumbered everyone else. I've been given lots of hints as to maximising days off and lots of invites to use beach houses that many staff here have. There is lots of talk of wine, many chocolates are consumed and I was delighted when on my third shift the nurse I was working with went off to do a coffee run (great lattes served here).
So far so good you could say, but I didn't really come here for the work! I'm off over Easter to enjoy the warm weather and more wine.
I'm still not on the Internet at home so will be a little while until my next post - hopefully by then I'll have some photos for you.
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