Further nursing school leadership update
The Northern region has had one nursing leader confirmed and another departing. NorthTec has confirmed Jane Anderson (top) as the new programme leader for nursing at Northland’s NorthTec. And down the road in Auckland, MIT’s head of nursing Debbie Penlington (below) has resigned to pursue new counselling interests. Anderson has been acting programme manager since Thomas Harding left the post in August. Anderson, who has a masters degree in adult education, has been involved in nursing education for more than 30 years, spanning the transition from the hospital-based apprentice-style system to degree-level education. She said her 22 years at NorthTec had given her a clear understanding of the challenges facing students from remote areas leading her to “embrace” new initiatives to reduce distance barriers, particularly for Mäori. Meanwhile at MIT the deputy head Willem Fourie is acting head of the nursing appointment while the polytechnic seeks to recruit a new head.
Inaugural Capital & Coast nursing excellence award
Capital & Coast marked International Year of the Nurse with a nursing awards ceremony, including the inaugural Ellen Dougherty Award for ‘overall excellence in nursing’.
Winner Natalie Scott was a major player in setting up a new wound care clinic in Porirua in collaboration with primary health organisation Ora Toa. Tribute was paid to her support of nursing colleagues’ professional development, her own ongoing postgraduate study, her understanding of patient needs and her “good humour and willingness to go the extra mile”. The award is named after New Zealand’s and the world’s first registered nurse, Ellen Dougherty, who trained at Wellington Hospital in the 1880s. Dougherty was registered in 1902 after the passing of the world’s first nurse registration Act the previous year. The Capital & Coast ceremony also included the presenting of awards in primary health care, aged-care, and hospital and health services. Plus an award to the highest achieving graduate nurse and further awards recognising preceptors, health care assistants and academic success.
NZ nurse part of WHO interprofessional report
A newly released World Health Organisation action plan for bringing the health professions closer together has been sent to the health minister by one of its Kiwi nurse backers. Unitec’s Wendy Horne was a member of the WHO study group behind the 60 page Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice. She said New Zealand health policy often advocated health professionals working more collaboratively across disciplines and across sectors. But students of the professions were still educated in silos. Horne has long been an advocate of interdisciplinary collaboration beginning at the undergraduate level and was the director of AUT’s National Centre for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice before moving to Unitec last year to take up the post of executive dean of the social and health services faculty.
A key message of the framework document is that interprofessional collaboration can play an important part in “mitigating” the global health workforce crisis. Also that WHO recognises interprofessional education as a “necessary step” in preparing a “collaborative practice-ready” health workforce better prepared to respond to local health needs. The WHO framework was published by the organisation’s Health Professions Network Nursing and Midwifery Office and is available on the WHO website: www.who.int
Kiwi input to International Disaster Nursing tome
Nursing’s role when faced with disasters, natural to man-made, are made clear in a new international book with Kiwi nursing input.
International Disaster Nursing – a 33 chapter guide to everything from disaster triage to chemical disaster preparedness – was released in May. Former chief nurse Frances Hughes joined forces with Australian nurse and Victorian bushfire psychosocial recovery team assistant director Margaret Grigg to write the chapter on mental health in disasters. And Massey University nursing academic Dean Whitehead wrote the chapter on disaster nursing research with Paul Arbon. The book aims to help nurses as frontline health professionals to understand the situations they might face in a disaster and how to plan and develop the necessary skills to cope.
Prospective aged-care NP appointed
Aged-care provider The Selwyn Foundation has appointed its first and one of the country’s very few ever nurse practitioner ‘interns’ in residential aged-care. Isabella Wright has been appointed to the new role of clinical nurse specialist and has commenced her master of health practice studies at the Auckland University of Technology with the aim of becoming an aged-care NP. Wright originally trained in Australia and already holds a master of public health and has worked in a variety of senior roles in the aged-care sector as well as working as an aged-care quality assessor. Hilda Johnson-Bogaerts, Selwyn’s residential services general manager said Wright would provide clinical leadership and nurse consultancy to its nurse managers and clinical coordinators seeking “increasingly higher acuity levels” and managing complex clinical issues. The role also included leading the professional development programme for nurses and implementing quality improvement projects.
