Prescribing pilot inches ahead
Further legal advice is being sought on a proposed draft order in council allowing a trial of diabetes nurse specialist prescribing. Health Workforce New Zealand (HWNZ) board member Helen Pocknall said the advice would come to its April meeting and it hoped to soon progress the trial of collaborative, limited prescribing. Mary Meendering, the chair of the Diabetes Nurse Specialist Section of NZNO, said pilot nurses needed to be supported by a specialist diabetes team so they could consult and check prescribing. Meendering and vice chair Pauline Giles envisaged the pilot would lead to cost and time savings for patients and in particular would help populations at high risk such has Māori, Pacific and Asian peoples and lower socio-economic groups. In the future they saw diabetes nurse specialists, who had completed or were undertaking masters degree study, being “well placed” to provide specialised expert clinical management to diabetes patients, including diagnosing and prescribing of treatments.
Pocknall said HWNZ intended the prescribing trial to be the first “cab off the block” but it was also asking the Health Minister Tony Ryall to put a “patch” on the Medicines Act to allow demonstration sites for limited prescribing in other professions, including pharmacists and dieticians. The April meeting would also discuss several district health board proposals for nurse colopscopy and nurse endoscopy trials.
WITT opens new nursing hub
Taranaki’s WITT nursing school has recently opened a new hub for nursing students on campus. School head Diana Fergusson said the new centre brings for the first time all nursing teaching into one area. It also provides more opportunities for students to mix and mingle with previous first and third-year students who barely see each other.
The opening of the $180,000 renovation follows the school cutting back cohorts for several years to refocus the school after a negative Nursing Council audit five years ago. Fergusson said the last of the smaller cohorts was due to finish this year and the school was in good heart with 100 per cent pass rates in the last two state final exams giving confidence back as well. This year there had been 200 applications for the 56 places and she said it had already received a significant number of applications for next year’s intake. The new hub consists of two lecture rooms, a small group tutorial room, an existing science lab and a clinical skills room.
Website for online networking
n A new website allowing nurses, doctors and other health sector specialists to network online is being developed by the Ministry of Health. Alan Spinks, national programme manager for quality improvement and innovation, said the website will have some of the social networking features of Facebook and Beebo, and will facilitate online discussions amongst clinicians in public and private forums. He said the project’s key driver was to facilitate learning and discussion amongst health professionals and quality managers by providing them with a secure online platform to share best practice and information without having to develop their own website. Formerly called the Health Improvement and Innovation Resource Centre, the website (www.hiirc.org.nz) will feature a 'knowledge library' of the latest New Zealand research on health sector productivity, quality and access to health care.
It will also allow email communication, web video conferences and audio conferences. The new website is due to be up and running in July.
