Former chief nurse Frances Hughes has a new perspective on losing nurses across the Tasman now she is joining them as Queensland Health’s new chief nurse.
Hughes said she had been headhunted for some time from across the Tasman and when this latest position came up she ran out of excuses for not making the move.
She said the job was a great opportunity, the timing was good, it fitted well with her family (she has a son and a brother in Queensland) and she had many good nursing friends in the state.
“I was asked the question ‘what’s stopping you from coming?’ and I kind of ran out of answers,” Hughes said.
“Also they offered me amazing recognition of my leadership skills…it was really humbling to be honest.”
Hughes, who was the Ministry of Health’s chief nurse advisor for eight years until late 2004, is aware of being seen to join the “brain drain” of New Zealand nurses crossing the Tasman.
“Am I a loss to New Zealand? Some would say I’m a loss and some will say its just one of those things that happens with our nursing workforce.”
She said she now also knew the huge effort involved in shifting to practice in another country and that it was not an easy step to take. “It’s never just about the money.”
“We’re not a dictatorship where we should be stopping nurses going – we should be helping nurses plan their practice, their education and looking at experiences they can get along that pathway and some of those will be out of the country.”
She said it was part of the wonderful nature of nursing that you were able to build professional skills that were marketable, transportable and in demand internationally.
“And I suppose I believe in paying forward and investing in people and seeing what happens,” added Hughes. “If you treat them well and offer them good things then New Zealanders I know, when they’ve got roots back here, are highly likely to come home.”
“I think the other thing about losing nurses to Australia is we’ve always got to make sure that there’s places for them to come back to, though this can be hard” said Hughes.
The new position will be Hughes’ first fulltime position for seven years, after recent years juggling numerous roles including facilitating the World Health Organisation’s Pacific Mental Health Network, academic and research work, disability advocacy roles and hands-on mental health and disability nursing.
Hughes said one of her strengths was maintaining strong networks and contacts and this would remain the same with her New Zealand colleagues.
“I will still retain strong links with the nursing and disability organisations I belong to here (like the College of Mental Health Nurses) and that won’t stop just because I’m over the ditch…I’m only three hours away. I may be in a different country but our health services are all tackling similar issues.”
She also believed, having worked with small countries spread across the width of the Pacific, that nursing and leadership skills were ‘borderless’ in many respects and the technology was available to build and maintain communities of interest.
The appointment follows closely behind her being awarded a senior Fulbright scholarship to spend up to five months in the United States studying post-disaster psychosocial lessons for health professionals.
Hughes said the topic was also very much of interest to Queensland so her new employers were ready to work with her on how she could fit the scholarship in with her chief nurse workload.
She will take up the Queensland position in early March. “There’s going to be a huge restructure of Queensland Health and I will be right in the middle of it. And that’s great. I think I will be able to use the best of my skills I’ve got.”
Hughes said she knew nothing about the restructure at present but saw her role as ensuring that nursing leadership and skills were kept safe and that the restructuring experience was not wounding for nursing.
“I sat through the New Zealand health restructure in the 1990s and that was pretty brutal for us. Nurses shouldn’t have to go through that. It was brutal. We were an experiment of the time but we lost a decade of charge nurses…”
“So I’ve got a good background of evidence, research and experience of what not to do.”
Hughes said she did not know whether her shift across the Tasman would be long-term but saw the new job as an exciting opportunity and wanted to do her best for Queensland Health and nursing.
