An Australian College of Operating Room Nurses (ACORN) submission (ACORN 2002-2008) recently stated that the specialities that suffered significantly from the transition of hospital-based 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.
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