Hi everyone,
I’m an exchange nursing student from Norway who is here in Australia for one semester. I am currently on a mental health placement, and I’ve been there one day and during that first day I felt chaos. I am so unused to everything and have never been in an Australian health setting before, so just that is a new thing for me. Yesterday I got assigned a buddy nurse, but he left me alone all the time and I had no idea what I was expected to do at all since I have no idea about the routines or nothing in general in this new setting. Back home it’s so more structured, and we get assigned on buddy nurse who’s going to be with us and supervise us during the whole placement. Here they said we’re going to have different ones each day, and I don’t know what I feel about that. The first day I thought was going to be about routines and how they work there, but I got no information at all and felt so lost the whole day and had no one to rely on.
I will be there for three weeks, and I have so much anxiety about this. My initial feeling about this placement was wow I’ll learn about a new health system and how they work in Australia, now I only feel anxiety and like a lot of pressure on me. I don’t know what I can expect from myself and have no idea what they expect from me since I’m an exchange student. I don’t know what I want to get out of this thread, only maybe ventilate and maybe get some advice on how I’m going to survive this 🥺