Enlarge photo

You Might Like

Packed To The Rafters

Beauty and the Geek

Double Take

Related Links

Meet the cast

Find out more about the team behind All Saints

Chat with other All Saints fans

Have your say in our vibrant community forum

PATIENT LIAISON NURSE/REGISTERED NURSE

Von is an intensely private woman who has been at All Saints for years. She is the keeper of the history of the place and has earned the respect and trust of all who know her.

Starting her professional life as an Enrolled Nurse, Von spent years doing her own thing instead of sharing the ambition of the younger nurses around her. But she did eventually upgrade to Registered Nurse status, and has now taken on the specialised role of Patient Liaison Nurse within the ED. This means she provides follow up care to the patients who come through the Department. She organises homecare nursing and provides for the emotional needs of the patients and their relatives.

She follows up with them in their homes and workplaces. And is often the first person to identify a medical need that may otherwise go unnoticed in the home environment.

Although still answerable to the Nursing Unit Manager, Von is largely autonomous in how she approaches her work and her working schedule. And it’s a situation she loves and excels at.

With a background in Paediatric care, Von is particularly adept at handling the younger patients and her no nonsense approach to teenagers allows her to reach them when all others fail to do so.

This has led her to champion the cause of teenagers in crisis over the years and while her private life is a bit of a mystery, given her fierce protection of it, we do know that she has a connection to the new Doctor at All Saints and that there was a man once, who Von cared deeply for and intended to marry. The Vietnam conflict put an end to those dreams when her partner was killed in combat, and Von was exposed to the worst of humankind – as well as the best. Consequently, it was a very different Von that returned home. A more cynical, hardened and independent woman, who has no time for whingers and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

She’s blunt, calling a spade a bloody shovel. But over and above all of that, Von is a fantastic nurse - one of the best. She feels deeply for all her patients. She can hit an emotional staff member with the reality stick - “the death of that patient was inevitable - he was riddled with cancer for God’s sake”! - but we are always afforded a glimpse of the fact that it got to her, too.

Von is a formidable force with a healthy disrespect towards authority for authority’s sake.