The University of Auckland’s school of nursing, launched in the new millennium, recently celebrated its first decade.
Judy Kilpatrick said the school scrambled together 50 students for the first undergraduate intake but by 2010 had an intake of 100 and a waiting list of 50. One of those first graduates will have her PhD conferred in October. Postgraduate numbers had also swelled from the initial 40 so the school now had 1200 students studying at various levels.
Cutting The University of Auckland’s nursing school anniversary cake are (from left) Margaret Horsburgh (founding co-director) Iain Martin (dean of the faculty of medical and health sciences) and Judy Kilpatrick (founding co-director and current head of school).
Kilpatrick said one change over the decade had been the number of nurses carving out advanced clinical roles. She said the slow build-up of NP numbers had been criticised, but there were now nurses educated and ready for such roles which wasn’t the case a decade ago.
She saw the push by Health Workforce New Zealand for new health roles as a great opportunity for nurses to step up to new roles, particularly in government priority areas like elective surgery and the recently announced bowel screening pilot.
Kilpatrick said the school was looking to offer in the near future a ‘nurse as first surgical assistant’ postgraduate qualification and expected the bowel screening programme would also lead to demand for nurse colonoscopists and nurse endoscopists. “Clearly these are roles that nurses can perform.”
She also believed nursing education needed to “get strategic” and schools needed to find their own niche rather than trying to be the same. “Instead, pick up the challenge of providing the different levels and types of workforce that are needed (i.e. enrolled nursing or masters level clinical programmes).”
Kilpatrick said being given the opportunity to set up a school from scratch had been a huge privilege and she still loved it.
She said one of the reasons for setting up a nursing school alongside a medical school was to “lift the level of clinical performance” by working alongside medical colleagues. The school had also followed the medical style in making joint clinical appointments and emphasising strong clinical partnerships.
