From nurse education, clinical, or workforce issues through to healthy living, Nursing Review has it covered.

A mental health nurse's lifetime work in supporting Māori mental health has been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours. The Northern Advocate's Peter de Graaf's reports that Caroline "Moe" Milne's interest in mental health was sparked by a 14-year-old classmate at high school.

The health minister has responded to recent reports of mental health beds being closed because of nursing shortages by saying the number of mental health nurses is increasing faster than other nursing areas.

Nurse shortages will see three beds temporarily closed in Wellington Hospital's Te Whare o Matairangi mental health unit.

Increased demand for addiction services and addiction nurses could follow a new act streamlining the compulsory treatment order process for people with severe addiction.

The first national programme aimed at reducing and preventing restraint of mental health clients by boosting nurses' therapeutic communication skills was launched recently.

The stories of pioneering Māori mental health nurses who trained from the 1950s onwards and helped to develop today's Māori health services are preserved on a new oral history website.

An offer for a new pay deal covering Public Service Association nurse members in the 20 DHBs is also close, says the PSA's national DHB organiser Ashok Shankar.

More new graduate nurses got jobs this July than in the past two years but still more than half of applicants missed out.

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.

Addiction lecturer and mental health nurse Dr DARYLE DEERING says people affected by mental health and addiction issues need a response from compassionate and skilled nurses.

Anxiety and depression are expected to be the leading causes of missed work days worldwide in the next five years. International research indicates that nurses already have higher levels of depression and anxiety than the general population. Nursing Review explores the issue.

When people are suffering from a mental illness, eating healthily often falls by the wayside. But what if nutritional deficiencies are a contributing cause in the first place? Nursing Review talks to psychology professor Julia Rucklidge about the links between nutrition and mental illness.

Simple activities developed to help teachers calm anxious kids in post-quake Canterbury are soon to be shared more widely to help nurses, parents and teachers boost child wellbeing around the country. Nursing Review talks to mental health nurse MICHELLE COLE to find out more.

A tsunami of mental health challenges on the horizon is helping to bring PHC nursing leaders across the Auckland isthmus together. FIONA CASSIE finds out more about the resulting collaborative project to upskill primary health nurses in mental health and addiction.

Find out more about kiwi nurse Dr Frances Hughes who is the southern hemisphere's first CEO of the International Council of Nurses. She took her up her Geneva-based post in February and on her 'bucket list' is learning another language...

PATRICIA McCLUNIE-TRUST looks at caring for nursing colleagues who are close to the edge and shares insights gathered from her research into Health Practitioners’ Disciplinary Tribunal misconduct cases.

Is mindfulness clinically effective? Check out this edition’s Critically Appraised Topic (CAT)

A tight job market on graduation saw MEL GREEN enter mental health, then a supportive new graduate programme after realising how nursing can make a difference to people’s mental illness experience. Leadership opportunities saw her make it a career.

*Blanket screening for family violence in primary health is the dream of family violence intervention champion Debs Higgins of Hastings Health Centre.*

Dunedin’s criminal courts are home turf for Patsy-Jane Tarrant, who recently gained a doctorate in her specialty field of forensic mental health.

Four years on, Christchurch’s nurses are still driving on bumpy roads to workplaces that are often temporary or under repair before returning to a home that may still be cracked or leaking. And with a $650 million rebuild, redevelopment and reshuffle of hospital services underway over the next four years and increasing demand for mental health services, it seems there is little relief in sight.

FIONA CASSIE talks to SUE TURNER, manager of Canterbury’s All Right? wellbeing initiative, about one small silver lining of the quakes – people’s awareness of their own mental health – and how All Right? is helping people restore and maintain their personal wellbeing.

New Zealand College of Mental Health Nurses President Anne Brebner describes her career progression, what she loves most about being a nurse leader, and how she would improve the New Zealand health system.

Role modeling by nurse leaders and pushes by a mentor helped Mental health nurse educator KATHY MOORE’s career “fall” into place.

Long-term mental health clients die prematurely at up to three times the rate of the rest of the New Zealand population. FIONA CASSIE finds out how nurses have been responding to long-standing calls to improve the physical health of people with long-term mental illness.

MARK SMITH of Te Pou puts the case for using ‘outcomes’ to judge ‘success’ in mental health nursing.

6.15am: I leap out of bed and go for a walk ... NOT!  Reality is that I snooze for another 15 minutes then drag myself from my happy place to make a cuppa...  Read on and find out how the rest of the day pans out for primary health care nurse Robynann Dyson.

NEWS

Daryle Deering's career was sealed with an afternoon tea at Sunnyside Hospital with the doyenne of mental health nursing Dame Margaret Bazley. Find out more about the College of Mental Health Nurses president.

We look to nurses as learners, educators, and leaders in this edition. Read on about teaching fledgling nurses in the classroom and on the ward, fostering leadership skills, nurses sharing their career tales, and milestones past and future in the recognition of competence and professional development.

New standards for mental health nursing were launched at this year’s inaugural Australasian Mental Health and Addiction Nursing Conference in Auckland. The standards set out what it is to be a mental health nurse, and in 2014, the College of Mental Health Nurses hopes to take the long awaited step and ‘certify’ its first mental health nurse. FIONA CASSIE reports on the New Zealand moves and what’s been happening across the Tasman.

To celebrate International Nurses Day this year Nursing Review invited district health boards across the country to contribute stories on nursing ‘heroes’ in their region. We got stories back on just some of the unsung, innovative, compassionate, high achievers and dedicated nurses that make up the New Zealand nursing workforce.

Dr Frances Hughes doesn’t court disasters but they have a habit of finding her. The former chief nurse was in New Jersey on a Fulbright scholarship studying post-disaster lessons when Hurricane Sandy hit. FIONA CASSIE reports on her latest literal lesson.

The first primary health nurse to gain formal recognition for her mental health nursing skills has been credentialed and others are due to follow.

The former chief nurse on how nursing helped underpin her top civil service career. She also shares her leadership philosophy and her love of rugby and gardening.

JENNI MANUEL shares a day in her life travelling the bumpy roads of Christchurch as a community mental health nurse case manager for the Canterbury District Health Board.

The country has its first nurse practitioner in addiction, Louise Leonard. All she needs now is an NP job. FIONA CASSIE reports.

About one in seven nurses smoke. Should they know better? Quitting is easier said than done. FIONA CASSIE talks to smokefree nurse advocates and nurse smokers about the battle to quit. And shares some top tips and research for nurses wanting to quit.

*Nurses' share their own stories about the battle to quit smoking*

About half of new mental health nurses intend to keep working in the mental health and addiction for at least another ten years, according to a recent survey.

Hutt Valley District Health Board director of nursing Toni Dal Din has returned to his nursing roots in taking on a mental health leadership position. Dal Din has headed down the valley to take up the position at Capital & Coast DHB as associate director of nursing for mental health. He said his grounding was in mental health and he had kept his eye on the sector, so when the mental health position came up at Capital & Coast for the first time in 10 years, he was keen. Dal Din held the mental health portfolio on the national nurse executive group NENZ, along with Magnet hospitals, and had always retained a passion for mental health. Meanwhile Mark Davies is the interim director of nursing at Hutt Valley DHB. Davies is currently nurse manager of the board’s emergency department and also has a background in mental health.

Mental health nurse and academic Daryle Deering has been elected new president of the College of Mental Health Nurses (Te Ao Maramatanga). The former vice-president was elected to replace outgoing chair Heather Casey who has completed her four-year term. Deering was director of mental health nursing for the Canterbury District Health Board from 2000 to 2007 and currently holds a joint clinical/research position with the board and the University of Otago, Christchurch. The senior lecturer is based at the university’s National Addiction Centre and her clinical and research focus is working with people with alcohol dependence and depression. She also coordinates a postgraduate interdisciplinary paper on the treatment of people with co-existing substance abuse and mental health problems. Deering believes the college has a primary role in the future of mental health nursing through “collaborative working and partnerships with other professional nursing and interdisciplinary bodies, consumers, and a range of other networks”.

Professional supervision increased confidence and improved practice, the evaluation of a Northland training pilot found.

Restricted activities reversal

The mental health sector is looking forward to 2010 after the restructured and sometimes controversial new graduate and postgraduate training places were finally decided in December.