The new man heading the woman-dominated New Zealand Nurses Organisations says holding nursing values are more important than gender in his new post.
Memo Musa, an English-trained mental health nurse and former CEO of the Whanganui District Health Board, is to take up the post in mid-May replacing longtime NZNO CEO Geoff Annals.
Musa told Nursing Review that demonstrated values and principles and how others were treated and valued that mattered in nursing and these were not gender specific.
He also said he saw the job as a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to lead a peak professional nursing body. He was looking forward to taking up the role during a “challenging time in the health sector” and wanted to ensure the nursing profession remains being heard at all levels in the health sector.
The Zimbabwean-born nurse trained in St Peters Hospital in Woking, Surrey in 1982 and worked as a clinical nurse specialist and manager before moving to New Zealand in 1999 to take up the post of general manager of mental health services for Whanganui District Health Board.
Musa said he continued to carry out nursing assessments and put together treatment programmes for people with complex mental health needs during his managerial role and even after becoming the DHB’s CEO in 2001 had maintained an active professional interest in nursing practice.
He resigned from the post as Whanganui DHB chief executive in 2008 in the wake of controversy over the board’s handling of the appointment and monitoring of the practice of the disgraced Czech-trained surgeon Roman Hasil (who had carried out a series of failed sterilizations at Whanganui Hospital).
At the time Musa said that he was proud of everything the board had achieved and that the incidents had occurred “despite and not because of the management changes and other changes implemented under my leadership”.
Musa told Nursing Review that that time had been difficult for himself and for Whanganui DHB as an organisation. “I reflected on that experience and took a lot out of it”.
He said he took some time out and in late 2008 went back to his grass roots by doing a return-to-nursing course followed by lecturing at UCOL in nursing. In 2009 he took up his current senior advisor role in mental health for the Ministry of Health and in recent years has also stepped into roles as an acting group manager and acting director of mental health for the ministry.
NZNO president Marion Guy and kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said Musa had a strong nursing and clinical background and a high level of credibility.
“He brings with him a wealth of experience and understanding of nursing, and he believes nursing is critical for the development of quality health delivery services in New Zealand,” Guy and Nuku said.
With his background as a DHB CEO he also had experience of working with unions and said he understood the “importance of healthy working environments, safe staffing and good clinical and professional practice”.
Musa said he had empathy for migrant and internationally-qualified nurses coming to New Zealand but also believed it was important for new migrant nurses to prepare for the new cultural setting and health system they would be nursing in.
“Therefore an understanding of Maori tikanga and the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and what they mean from a nursing perspective, is actually quite important.”
He said in preparing himself to come to work in Whanganui, with 21-22 per cent of the population being Maori, “I had to come with some expectation and understanding that I would be nursing in a different cultural perspective compared to what I did in the UK”.
