Enrolled Nurse graduate program

Enrolled Nurse Graduate Program APPLY HERE

The Enrolled Nurse Graduate Program at St Vincent’s Private Hospital Melbourne educates and supports new Enrolled nurse graduates to develop confidence, professionalism and clinical expertise, whilst providing experience in a diverse and challenging range of speciality nursing environments. We are committed to developing your career and ensuring that your graduate year will be an exciting and rewarding experience.

When you join St Vincent’s Private Hospital Melbourne, you will work at one or more of our four locations across Melbourne: Fitzroy, East Melbourne, Kew and Werribee .

Only one application is required to be submitted for the program. We do not require separate applications for each site.

Aims of the program

Our program aims to facilitate your transition from student to Enrolled Nurse. We are completely committed to developing your career and ensuring that your graduate year will be an exciting and rewarding experience.

We recognise that as an undergraduate you may have had limited opportunities to explore different clinical areas. Our program is designed to give you these opportunities so that in the future you will have a better understanding of where you would like to focus your nursing career and consolidate your nursing skills.

Our program

Our Enrolled Nurse Graduate Program is designed to:

offer you a wide range of rotation options so that you gain comprehensive clinical experience,
enable you to use your evidence-based knowledge to achieve quality patient outcomes,
increase your confidence and strengthen your skills base,
develop your ability to work independently and as a team member,
enhance your decision making and critical thinking skills,
allow you to enjoy your nursing career.

Streams

We are committed to growing a diverse Enrolled Nurse workforce and are therefore offering 4 streams to choose from for your graduate year. We offer full time and part time positions (minimum of 8 shifts a fortnight) across a variety of shifts including weekends, night duty and public holidays

Acute Ward Based Stream:

• Two 6-month clinical ward rotations across a broad clinical ward base specialty mix - Haematology, Thoracics, Colorectal, Orthopaedics, Sarcomas, Upper GIT, Bariatrics, ENT, Neurosurgery, Urology, Gynaecology, Plastics and Vascular.

Mixed Acute Ward and Specialty Stream:

• Two 6-month rotations in a clinical ward base specialty mix - Haematology, Thoracics, Colorectal, Orthopaedics, Sarcomas, Upper GIT, Bariatrics, ENT, Neurosurgery, Urology, Gynaecology and Vascular. Surgical specialty mix - Cardiac, PACU, Scrub/Scout, DPU, Urogynae or Plastic surgery and Reconstruction.

Operating Theatre Stream:

• One 12-month rotation in either Post-anesthesia Care Unit (PACU)/Recovery or Scrub/Scout that will allow you to enhance decision making skills and critical thinking whilst consolidating your specialty knowledge in a complex surgical environment.

Oncology Stream:

• One 6-month rotation that will allow you to enhance decision making skills and critical thinking in ward-based oncology nursing, leading to an opportunity to consolidate knowledge in a further six-month rotation to day infusion services. Both areas with provide exposure to CVAD's, blood products and supportive therapy, transferring knowledge from an inpatient's environment to outpatient settings.

Rotations

The program is conducted over our four Melbourne Private Hospital locations (Fitzroy, East Melbourne, Werribee and Kew) and graduates should expect to rotate to different campuses. Graduates have the opportunity to nominate which clinical areas they would like to rotate to and we try very hard to match you with your requests. You do not need to have undergraduate experience in any of the clinical areas.

St Vincent’s Private East Melbourne is a 12-minute walk from St Vincent’s Private Fitzroy through the beautiful Fitzroy gardens and St Vincent’s Private Kew is only 5kms away in Kew. Our Werribee hospital is located in Melbourne’s western suburbs. All campuses are easily accessible via public transport.

Clinical support

The Education & Development team at St Vincent’s Private Melbourne are confident that you will have the support you need to achieve your goals for your graduate year. All of our education team members are hands on and are willing to assist you.

Our graduates receive clinical support on each rotation, in that you will be allocated a preceptor and there is a clinical coach to provide hands on bedside clinical support and education in a friendly and supportive manner with an education consultant that oversees the entire program.

During your program you will receive a graduated workload and supernumery time to assist you in the transition to a professional enrolled nurse.

We offer extensive education programs, including a minimum of 4 paid study days as well as access to ward based education, twilight seminars and short courses.

Application details APPLY HERE

We welcome applications from all TAFEs throughout Australia. It is not necessary for you to have completed a clinical placement St Vincent's to apply.

Only one application is required to be submitted for the program. Please specify the stream you are applying for in your application. (We do not require separate applications for each site).

Who is eligible?

The 2025 Enrolled Nurse Graduate Program is offered to nursing graduates:

Who are Registered with APHRA as an Enrolled Nurse (Diploma of Nursing qualification within the last 6 months with full IV endorsement) or will have their AHPRA registration by the commencement date of the program
March Intake commences Monday 17th March 2025
September Intake commences Monday 8th September 2025

Important dates

March Intake

Applications open: Monday 11th November 2024

Applications close: Friday 6th December 2024

Interviews commence: Monday 20th January 2025

Program commences: Monday 17th March 2025

September Intake

Applications open: Monday 23rd June 2025

Applications close: Friday 18th July 2025

Interviews Commence: Monday 21st July 2025

Program commences: Monday 8th September 2025

All applications will be accepted through our online portal Workday and need to include the following:

A covering letter, including the stream you are applying for
Succinct Curriculum Vitae, outlining your clinical placements and work experience (no more than three pages), with two professional referees, one of whom must be from an adult acute care placement of two weeks or longer and the second can be your current manager
A certified copy of academic transcript with legend
A certified copy of your acute care placement logbook including formative and summative appraisals and competencies.

Application to be addressed to:

Emily McLennan
Enrolled Nurse Graduate Program Coordinator
St Vincent's Private Hospital Melbourne
59 Victoria Parade
Fitzroy VIC 3065

Certification of documents

Documents that have been certified by your TAFE must have the following:

The official TAFE stamp identifying the TAFE, and must be signed by a representative from the clinical school office.

Documents certified outside the TAFE must follow the AHPRA guidelines for document certification, on the AHPRA website Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency - Certifying Documents (ahpra.gov.au)

TAFEs that have documents that are handwritten must be certified prior to scanning and uploading.

Interview process

We endeavour to respond to your application within in 48hrs of receiving it. All applications will be reviewed by the Enrolled Nurse Program Coordinator.

If selected for an interview, you will be contacted via phone. If you have not been selected for an interview you will receive a letter via email.

You will have some choice and flexibility when selecting an interview time, the earlier your application is received the more flexibility you will have in selecting a suitable interview time aim to have your application in at least a week prior to the specified in the important dates section.

We know that you have put a lot of time and effort into preparing your application and we will open and review all applications. Please pay particular attention to your spelling and grammar. It is a good idea to get someone to check your application. Make sure you send in all of the required information. Aim to send in your application at least one week prior to the closing date.

We will notify you within 48hrs of receiving your application if you have or have not been selected for an interview. We do this so that you have the opportunity to apply to an alternative hospital if your application has been unsuccessful.

Unsuccessful applicants have often sent in incomplete applications, have incorrectly certified documents, have made a number of spelling and grammar errors or have sent in an application intended for another hospital. Unfortunately we will not be able to offer unsuccessful applicants the opportunity to resubmit part or all of their application.

I am happy to answer any questions you have when preparing your application- just call or email me.

Our patient mix ensures that you will be able to care for patients who have had highly acute and complex surgical procedures such as open heart surgery, acute interventional cardiac procedures, major orthopaedic and reconstructive surgery, craniotomies and spinal surgery, major abdominal and vascular surgery. We also receive acute admissions from surrounding emergency departments and direct emergency ambulance admissions.

Nurses at St Vincent's Private Hospital, Melbourne receive the same entitlements as public hospitals such as annual leave and superannuation.

Our priority is to ensure that our patients receive the highest standard of care and our nurse patient ratio is determined by the acuity and complexity of the care required. As a graduate you will work in a team of nurses in a collaborative care model.

Our Surgeons and Physicians visit patients at least daily (often more) and actively liaise with the nurses looking after their patients. We also uniquely have medical and surgical residents/registrars and after hours onsite HMO’s who are available to assist you with patient care. Our ICU, Cardiac and HDU units are available for patients who need extensive monitoring and support. You will always have access to the support you need to provide high quality care for your patients.

Our patients have access to full allied health support such as onsite physiotherapy, dieticians, diabetes educator, social work, stomal therapy, occupational therapy and discharge planning. We also have onsite x-ray departments and pathology. These services also offer great support to nursing staff and are always willing to answer any questions you have regarding their service and also patient care.

We only require you to complete a maximum of two weeks night duty during the program.

We welcome applications from all TAFE’S and it does not matter if you have not had the opportunity to have a placement with us.

Yes. At interview you will fill out your preferences for which clinical areas you would like to rotate through. Every effort will be made to ensure your rotations match your preferences however some areas are more popular than others. We never send any graduate to an area that they have ranked in the lower half of preference lists.

All of our EN graduates are employed on a permanent ongoing contract. Upon completion of the program you may have the opportunity to work in a variety of clinical areas.

Emily McLennan
Enrolled Nurse Program Coordinator
St Vincent's Private Hospital Melbourne
59 Victoria Pde
Fitzroy Vic 3065

Phone: (03) 9411 7331
Email: SVPHM.Education.Programs@svha.org.au

Nurses with a patient

Melbourne Enrolled Nurse Graduate Program