Nurses nationwide are invited to take part in a major online survey hoping to pinpoint the real differences between a staff nurse and a specialist nurse’s daily work.
The New Zealand Nursing Practice Survey was launched online this week by Massey University researchers Professor Jenny Carryer and Dr Jill Wilkinson.
Carryer says the research survey aims to address the real confusion in the nursing sector – both here and overseas – about the difference between the many different nursing roles and what difference experience, qualifications and job title actually makes. And particularly over what actually is an advanced practice nursing role and what level of nursing practice does it actually involve.
“We want to know if there is any consistency between how different jobs are titled, paid, employed and understood (across the country),” said Carryer.
New Zealand currently has a plethora of clinical nursing job titles including clinical nurse specialist, clinical nurse consultant, clinical nurse educator, specialty clinical nurse, clinical resource nurse, clinical nurse co-coordinator and associate clinical nurse manager. But the only protected title is nurse practitioner.
“The New Zealand Nurses Organisation have done some very good work around trying to clarify titles, roles and pay scales (of senior nursing roles),” said Carryer. “What we don’t actually know is what is the different nature of practice between all those roles and titles.”
The research hopes to find out more by asking nurses a series of questions using a sophisticated research tool to get a handle on what are the differences in clinical and leadership responsibilities and the practice level between nursing roles across the whole spectrum of practice from new graduates to nurse practitioners and nurse leaders.
The survey tool was first developed in the United States and has been further tested by an Australian nursing research team, which has just completed surveying Australian nurses and is currently analysing the data.
Carryer said the New Zealand survey and research has been given an unanimous thumbs-up by the National Nursing Organisations group which include the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, the College of Nurses Aotearoa, the Nursing Council, the two nurse educator groups, the College of Mental Health Nurses and the National Council of Maori nurses.
The anonymous online survey is inviting any nurse currently practising in a clinical environment ie. a public hospital, general practice, private hospital or rest home etc to take part.
The survey ask nurses about their qualifications, position, role titles and experience and then there is a short questionnaire of 41 questions covering five domains of nursing practice including direct care and professional leadership.
You can click on the below link to go through to the survey: www.surveymonkey.com/s/Nursing_practice_survey
The survey will close in December and the first results will be released from mid-next year.
