Primary health leader Chris Kerr starts as new director of nursing for Hutt Valley District Health Board at the end of the month.
Kerr is currently chief operating officer at Wellington primary health organisation Compass Health where she has worked since 2009, initially as clinical services director. A registered nurse since the early 1980s, her nursing career included secondary care, women’s health and aged residential care, before primary care became her focus from the early 1990s.
Hutt Valley DHB chief executive Ashley Bloomfield said the director of nursing role was part of the new structure at Hutt with Kerr to be a member of the DHB’s executive leadership team.
Bloomfield thanked Hutt nursing leaders for supported the new director of nursing recruitment process over the last few months and for continuing to provide excellent leadership in interim roles.
Kerr was a nurse manager at Hora Te Pai Health Services in Paraparaumu before joining Compass in 2009. She holds a postgraduate diploma in primary health care and her role in Compass included oversight of community services (including outreach nursing, mental health and school-based services), clinical quality and integrated care development.
From 2013 to October 2016 Helen Pocknall was the executive director of nursing and midwifery for both Hutt Valley and Wairarapa DHBs. Pocknall, a longstanding director of nursing and midwifery at Wairarapa DHB before the combined DHB executive role, was interim director of nursing for Hutt Valley until March this year. She is deputy chair of Health Workforce New Zealand and recently established her own consultancy business.
In October last year Michele Halford, who had been working for Wairarapa DHB as a nursing director since 2013, was appointed executive leader nursing for Wairarapa as part of the shift back to local executive leadership for each board.
