Future perioperative registered nurses: an insight into a perioperative programme for undergraduate nursing students
An Australian College of Operating Room Nurses (ACORN) submission (ACORN 2002'“2008)
recently stated that the specialities that suffered significantly from the transition of hospitalbased
nursing training to university training were the perioperative specialty, critical care and
emergency. The main reason for this was that perioperative nursing was not included in the
undergraduate nursing curriculum. Less than a handful of universities in Australia offer the
subject as a compulsory unit. The University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) is one of these
universities. This paper will provide an insight into the perioperative nursing care unit
embedded within the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) undergraduate curriculum.
