Woo lots of things to comment on here!

Firstly, the BMID and BNURS course are fairly different in first year - there are only 2 of the subjects each semester that are in common (biology and being a health professional in first sem, and biology and cultural perspectives on health in 2nd) and there are big mid subjects in both semesters. It is hard to convey just *how* separate you are when you study mid - you have little to do with the nursing cohort except for a few labs and it is a fairly tight-knit group in the BMID (not all chummy though!).

Not sure about transferring but the problem will always be that there are limited spots for the BMID course so transfering isn't easy - it's still a small pot to try to get a place in!

Sara - there are no placements in first year for nursing, but there are for us student mids . I did 3 last year - one in a postnatal ward with a bit of birthing as well in a private hospital, one in an acute care nursing situation (it was a placement for the nursing skills subject that I did) where I caught lots of babes in Whyalla, and one in an antenatal clinic in Adelaide.

To a point you get to choose your own placements but it's only to select three preferences and there's no way to guarantee what you do. Keep an open mind about placements because all experience is fantastic! Placements are all over the place in Adelaide by the way.

Nina - This is going to sound harsh so I'll done my flameproof suit but from my experience, nothing upsets the staff at the uni, or other students, to see a place go to someone who can't carry through the course and then it's lost for an entire 3 years. I'd look into whether you can defer or not because my understanding is that you can't - some students have cut back their case load but I still think you need to keep studying and travelling and doing placement to maintain your candidacy.

Places in the course are *really* hard to come by and there are always more people to take the place and if you got in one year you have a good chance of getting in the following. Hard as it may be to swallow, doing nursing at your local uni and transferring at a later date, or doing the graduate program to get the BMID qualification may be a better and more flexible option.

Placements are usually in your home state and city but for Tasmania I can see that being a hard call if the culture isn't there to support the concept of direct entry. If there's no support for placements for local students, then you'd have to attend a placement in Adelaide as part of the course. Placements aren't deferable either. You'd have to find out whether there are arrangements in place with various hospitals to accept you from an insurance/liability point of view. I do know that people have had placements in Wollongong, country Qld, country Victoria and Canberra but not Tasmania. I doubt that the clinical placement unit could guarantee that until placements were arranged each year either - that's what has happened with the non-local students this year as well.