Ramblings on life in Melbourne

Perhaps I shall return to America a bit more leftist in my political thinking after spending some time in Australia. Why?

I just asked for two weeks of vacation for when my parents come and visit. Granted, I have only been working for 6 weeks, and only have a 6 month contract.

It was granted with no questions asked. And I"m already thinking of when I want to take my other week or so off before leaving the country.

In Orange County, as a full-time registered nurse, I believe I got around 2 weeks a year. Here, a full-time employee gets 6 weeks/year plus "ADO" (which adds up to about 2 additional weeks/year) paid vacation time. That is almost as good as the teacher's summer vacation every year! I believe the maternity benefits are much better here as well (3 months paid time off and guaranteed position for one year).

It is difficult to get an impression of the overall quality of healthcare being delivered simply from my day to day care of patients, but the technology, procedures, and medical knowledge/research seem very up-to-date.

Also, I have been impressed with how few homeless (and the weather is pretty moderate) or very poor people here in Melbourne. Yes, there are some housing projects for the new immigrant families, but I have yet to see a really bad part of this town of 3 million.

I am curious to compare how much I am being taxed here compared to the States. I bet it isn't more that 10% more. And heathcare professionals and charities here get some nice tax breaks (spendings of up to $9000 a year on things like rent, morgages, health insurance, car payements, etc. don't have to be taxed).

Work is going ok. Unfortunately, I will not be getting any of the post-cardiac surgery or really unstable patients while I am here, because I don't have the Australian post-graduate ICU certification. And, I have to go to classes once a month which are quite boring. However, it is nice to sit through an advanced life support class/simulation and not feel stressed. Overall, nurses in the ICU are not worked as hard as in the U.S. either. I have always had ample "tea breaks" and the nursing: patient ratios here are almost always 1:1 compared to 1:2 in the U.S. I was expecting it to be more overworked here as I have heard horror stories from British nurses, but this expectation was wrong.

They are kicking me out of the hospital library and so I'm off to a Greek lesson with Yiannis.