“Further to our conversation at the CNSA I just wanted to email you to let you know how beneficial I have found the ‘post graduate certificate in Breast Cancer Nursing’ course.
I came into this McGrath Breast care nurse role with no specific breast cancer experience (albeit 22 years of nursing behind me which included 9 years of palliative care!).
I found that the course was so applicable to everything I was doing on a daily basis and it added to my confidence, being able to back up my conversations with patient with actual evidence I have come across in my studies and searches for literature to do my assignments.
I am not an academic and I have to admit a certain amount of stress in the lead up to an assignment, but looking back, even under stress the learning through the assignments was invaluable and now I look back at my assignments with pride and think ‘did I actually write that?’!
I have studied another post grad cert with another academic facility in Australia and I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say I came out the other side of that course none the wiser and it definitely did not make me a better nurse. This to me is sad to think that courses are mainly academic focused rather than applicable to the clinical setting. The main difference I found was that with the ACN the students were able to demonstrate what we had already learned in our previous nursing practice and give our opinion-to a point.
In the other academic facility I was told on a few occasions that ‘in academic writing no one wants your opinion so please don’t write it.’ !!!!!!!!!
I just wanted to thank you for all the support and just by being there and being available it meant a lot.”