Seventeen years after stepping into her pioneering role as a Canterbury primary health care nursing leader Shelley Frost has stepped down to concentrate on national roles
Her path to becoming Pegasus Health’s first director of nursing began 33 years when as a young nurse fresh back from her OE she took on a relieving practice nurse role on her return to Christchurch.
She resigned from Pegasus in July to concentrate on her General Practice New Zealand roles (see main story) and a new part-time role as quality clinical advisor for the College of GPs. Last year she also became deputy chair of the board of the Health Quality and Safety Commission a role she says is a significant challenge but one she is “absolutely loving”.
Frost says amongst the achievements for nursing she is proud of during her time at Pegasus includes in 1998 extending Pegasus’s small group education programme to nurses, the setting up of Pegasus’s influential nursing advisory group, in 2001 being the first nurse director on the Pegasus board and seeing the signing off of a nursing development strategy, and most recently setting up a nurse membership company within Pegasus which 120 of the about 350 nurses are shareholders in.
As Nursing Review went to press Pegasus was advertising for a new director of nursing calling for an “aspiring and visible leader” whose main focus was the “provision of professional and clinical nursing leadership” but with a “crucial” component being work closely with other clinical leaders to design and implement innovative models of care.
