Member apathy has been a frustration for the outgoing inaugural chair of the College of Primary Health Care Nurses NZNO, Rosemary Minto.
But she is proud that three-year-old college has gelled into a good working group representing primary health care nursing and one that has a good working relationship with the Ministry of Health and General Practice Leaders Forum.
The College was created in 2010 by the formal merger of the former college of practice nurses and the public health and district nurse sections of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation.
Minto, a nurse practitioner and former chair of the practice nurse college for four years, was elected in August 2010 as the new college’s chair and is standing down in November due to family reasons.
She said the membership of the college was still predominantly practice nurses but had a growing group of other primary health care nurses including prison nurses and iwi nurses.
“I think we’ve managed to get the message out to many nurses, particularly through our journal, that primary health care is such a wide sphere of practice that many more nurses are identifying as primary health care nurses now – including those working in residential aged care, for example.”
She said she numbered amongst the college’s successes that it was working very closely with the Ministry of Health around clinical integration issues.
“Also the work we’ve been doing with the General Practice Leaders Forum. It’s been great to be able to influence some of the policies and discussions in that forum.
“I think member apathy has been a frustration,” said Minto.
“Just getting effective communication out to membership – we’ve done our best, but we can only do so much. You have to rely on members to be part of that.”
Recently, the Ministry of Health’s deputy director general, Cathy O’Malley, challenged the nursing sector to be more pro-active in influencing the direction of primary health care (see story in Nursing Review September edition).
Minto said the college was a “bit bemused” by Cathy O’Malley’s comment.
“Her perceptions of what we we’re doing and ours didn’t seem to quite match.”
She said it had certainly been very vocal with Ministry chief nurse Jane O’Malley and had lots of correspondence and teleconferences with Cathy O’Malley.
“We will just continue to take every opportunity to be vocal about how the proposed primary health changes will affect primary health care nurses and how potentially they can meet the needs of the ministry as well as patients.”
Minto said there were still a few barriers in how primary health care nurses can practice. She said the Ministry was working very hard to remove the barriers – in particular, for nurse practitioners.
“The attitudes of consumers is one thing that we haven’t addressed either as a college or as primary health care nurse,” said Minto.
“I think we need to educate consumers as to the potential for accessing nursing rather than the GP in the first instance.”
“The more vocal we are it will start happening,” says Minto.
“It’s a good sign that NZ Locums (which holds the Government contract to recruit GPs and now NPs for rural New Zealand) is looking for nurse practitioners to put on its books for rural areas down south. That’s telling us that there is starting to be a market for NPs.”
Minto remains on the college executive committee and said she would be working very hard on membership issues and building the regional networks.
