Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand articles from December 2003

Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand archives from December 2003

Facing up to the New Year's challenges.(editorial)
December 1, 2003... THE END of the year is a good time to reflect on some of NZNO's achievements and contemplate the challenges that await us in the New Year. Our membership has continued to rise and reached a new peak in December at nearly 35,000. This...

Targeting the aging and voting population.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... MENTAL HEALTH nurse Chris Cottingham spans many subjects in his article on nursing education in November's Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand (p16-17) and rightly points out the problem of student numbers in relation to the population requiring our...

Government support for new graduate programmes vital.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I READ Chris Cottingham's article "Nursing education--the solution or the problem?" in the November issue of Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand (p16-17) with interest, as it was about "issues" in undergraduate nursing education. May I suggest that...

Funding shortages threaten graduate nurse programmes.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... HOW DO we keep new graduates in nursing and address the exodus of new graduates going overseas? One key recruitment strategy is to offer a well-resourced graduate nurse programme (GNP) to provide a supportive environment for the...

Enrolled nurses can provide best care for acute patients.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I AGREE newly trained enrolled nurses (ENs) should care for stable patients, because they have only had a basic training, but staff nurses come and go. I have been working on an acute orthopaedic ward for ten years, and have watched a...

Treatment of enrolled nurses shocks mental health nurse.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... THANK YOU for your recent profiles of enrolled nurses (ENs) in the October issue, p18-20. I recently moved to Gisborne and am working as a casual staff nurse in Gisborne Hospital's mental health unit where six ENs are employed on the ward. ...

Fair Pay Campaign should unite all nurses.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I READ the October issue of Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand with interest. First there was the editorial by chief executive Geoff Annals about achieving greater professional maturity (p2). I thoroughly applaud NZNO's Fair Pay Campaign and wish...

Honouring the psychopaedic nurse title.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... THROUGH THESE pages, I would like to pass on my congratulations to Sharon Clair on her appointment as Maori policy analyst. Clair trained as a psychopaedic nurse at Kimberly in Levin in the 1970s and worked in the intellectual disability field...

Clarifying Wintec's Tihei Mauri Ora focus.(letters)
December 1, 2003... IT WAS good to see the November edition of Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand focusing on education and I appreciate the support and interest of the co-editors in covering curriculum changes at the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) (p7). ...

Nurse in UK seeks information on COPD.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I AM looking at the services provided by the local trust where I work for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This work is being done to improve diagnosis, rehabilitation and community services, improving quality of life...

Christmas and New Year greetings.
December 1, 2003... A GROUP of nurses recently told me they thought it had been a great year for nursing. I hope 2004 will be even better. There was certainly some cause for celebration this year. The passing of the Health Practitioners' Competence Assurance...

Fair Pay Campaign continues rolling.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... NZNO'S FAIR Pay Campaign juggernaut continues to gain momentum, heading into 2004. Late last month a 9000-plus signature petition from district health board nurses demanding money be set aside in the 2004 budget for a fair pay settlement...

Lower North Island MECA talks underway.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... NEGOTIATIONS FOR the Lower North Island Multi-Employer Collective Agreement (MECA) are underway, with five days completed. NZNO advocate Lyn Olsthoorn hopes there will be a settlement offer to take to members before Christmas. Report back...

National Student Unit delegate wins $1000 scholarship.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... NATIONAL STUDENT Unit (NSU) delegate and Waikato Institute of Technology third-year nursing student, Kaye Johnson (right), has won the inaugural 1st Contact Recruitment scholarship. She hopes to do post-graduate study at some stage and will use...

Opposition mounts to Government's employment law change.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... MEMBERSHIP RESISTANCE to the Government's proposals to limit strike action by nurses and other health sector workers was building, as Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand went to press. The Government's Employment Relations Law Reform Bill...

ACC introduces patient handling guidelines.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... THE ACCIDENT Compensation Corporation (ACC) has introduced patient handling guidelines, based on a no-lift approach. The recently-released guidelines state any load of more than 16 kilograms is risk to nurses and other health workers. The...

No funding available for graduate nurse programmes in 2004.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... CO-ORDINATORS OF graduate nurse programmes (GNPs) around the country are calling for national funding to ensure the programmes continue. The Ministry of Health's Clinical Training Agency funded three pilot programmes in 2002--at Waikato...

Otago graduate nurse programme develops aged care specialty.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... A GRADUATE nurse programme at the Otago District Health Board (DHB), being run in partnership with Presbyterian Support's St Andrew's Home and Hospital in Dunedin, is working "stunningly well", according to St Andew's manager Karen Mehalski...

Improving organ donor rates.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... MAJOR CHANGES to the organ donor regime in New Zealand to bring it into line with other countries have been recommended by Parliament's Health Select Committee. New Zealand has a comparatively low donor rate of around 9.5 donors per...

Honouring a life of concern for nurses' welfare.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... LESS THAN two months before her death, former NZNA executive director Thelma Burton was in the media spotlight fronting NZNO's Fair Pay Campaign launch. She was photographed in the Dominion Post on September 19 signing and posting the first of...

NZNO lobbies Government to resolve enrolled nursing issues.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... NZNO IS continuing a campaign with Government to resolve two major enrolled nursing issues. The first concerns the employment of enrolled nurses (ENs) in district health boards (DHBs), especially in acute areas; the second the training and...

Military service remembered.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... NAPIER HOSPITAL-TRAINED Eva MacKay (right), who died in her 102nd year in November in Hastings, had a distinguished military nursing career, serving as Colonel of the New Zealand Nursing Corps, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, from...

Nursing innovation projects making progress.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... THE ELEVEN nursing innovation projects, funded through the Ministry of Health, are at different levels of development. A number have made or are on the verge of making significant appointments. Recently representatives from the 11 projects...

Mobile service aims to reduce inequalities in Maori health.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... THE RECENTLY established Mobile Maori Disease State Management (DSM) Nurses Trust, at its meeting in November in Rotorua, acknowledged the positive health outcomes this nursing service is achieving. Chairperson of the trust, nurse practitioner...

Encouraging more nurses onto boards.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... SHARING EXPERIENCES about serving on boards and strategising about how to get more nurses elected onto boards were the main aims of a meeting of 26 nurses in Wellington in November. The group included some district health board (DHB) members,...

Professional development framework now out for consultation.(news and events)
December 1, 2003... THE NATIONAL Professional Development and Recognition Programmes (PDRP) working party, established in March 2003 by all national nursing organisations, has produced a draft national framework. Comments and feedback are now being sought, with a...

The unique challenges of outback nursing: it's not every nurse who could cope with the isolation, heavy workload and minimal health gains of working in a remote Aboriginal community.(nursing overseas)
December 1, 2003... FOR ZEALAND-TRAINED nurse and midwife Theo Allan, working in the Aboriginal community of Utopia--three to fours hours by road north east of Alice Springs in Australia's Red Centre--was an experience she wouldn't have missed for the world....

Nursing abroad broadens horizons: working abroad is proving a valuable experience for one New Zealand nurse--and the pay rates are good--but there are pitfalls nurses need to be aware of.(nursing overseas)
December 1, 2003... SINCE MARCH 2002, my family and I have been travelling and working in Australia and Canada. Some of the experiences we have had may be helpful to other New Zealand nurses wanting to work abroad. I graduated from the then Southland Community...

Hand washing--rituals and regimes in practice: hand washing is a basic nursing task and a profoundly important aspect of nursing practice. Done well, it can greatly reduce the risk of infection. Done badly, it can severely compromise patient care.(practice)
December 1, 2003... IN CONTEMPORARY health care practice, why don't staff wash their hands as often as they should? And what are we, as a profession, doing about it? Hand washing is a basic and routine task. But it is also one of the very foundations on which we...

Assessment skills vital to sound nursing practice: an accurate nursing assessment can save a patient's life. Here a nurse describes how one such assessment did just that. She also outlines how more than a decade later that assessment still influences her practice.(viewpoint)
December 1, 2003... ASSESSMENT SKILLS are the first and most important ingredient in the multi-faceted mix that constitutes safe nursing care. Accurate assessment can save a patient's life. In my 22-year enrolled nursing career, predominantly in orthopaedics, I...

Loss of NP title causes demoralization: a group of neonatal nurse practitioners, once regarded as NP models, feel their titles have been unjustly removed.(viewpoint)
December 1, 2003... I HAVE been a neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP) in the United States (US) since 1991. I completed a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) in 1977 and my NNP certificate in 1990. The US National Certification Corporation has certified me for...

Fund will bring changes for nursing research: a new, performance-based structure for funding research at universities may affect nursing research.(news focus)
December 1, 2003... THE GOVERNMENT'S new structure for funding research in universities, the Performance-based Research Fund (PBRF), has received mixed reviews from nursing academics. The fund is designed to "reward and encourage excellence in research"...

A cultural safety journey: a Maori nurse educator shares her cultural safety journey and her belief that visiting a marae should be compulsory for all nursing students.(education)
December 1, 2003... MY JOURNEY of enlightenment as a nurse educator in cultural safety began while attending a hui for Maori health workers at Tapu o te Ranga Marae, Wellington, in 1990, where l had the privilege of meeting te ataahua wahine toa, Irihapeti...

Discovering the heart and soul of nursing: facing the possible loss of her career following an injury, a nurse discovers what makes nursing special to her.(viewpoint)
December 1, 2003... OVER THE last two years, I have sustained three shoulder injuries, incurred during the course of my work as a senior registered nurse at Dunedin's Mercy Hospital. A recent medical assessment has advised me not to return to hands-on nursing...

Celebrating 50 or more years of nursing: three nurses--two of whom are still nursing--look back on careers that have seen radical change and many improvements to patient care.(profiles)
December 1, 2003... SHONA PETTENGILL, staff nurse in charge of the operating theatre holding bay at Christchurch Hospital, retired in early October at the age of 68 after exactly 50 years--to the day--of nursing. "It probably wasn't the most convenient day to...

Recommended reading from the NZNO library.(books)
December 1, 2003... In the last 12 months, a substantial amount of new material has been added to the NZNO library collection. This is available for borrowing by both staff and NZNO members. It costs nothing to borrow material, although members are expected to...

Fair pay campaign embraces all members: NZNO's Fair Pay Campaign is not confined to public sector nurses and midwives. It will improve pay rates for all NZNO members.(industrial focus)
December 1, 2003... NZNO'S FAIR Pay Campaign is a campaign for all NZNO members. Success breeds success, and one of the great things about the success of the Fair Pay Campaign has been the pressure now being generated by NZNO members in private sector and...

NZNO argues case for superannuation: nurses need superannuation as much as teachers or police.(industrial focus)
December 1, 2003... THE GOVERNMENT recently announced a new state sector superannuation scheme. The scheme covers civil servants, the military and police, and teachers in schools and kindergartens. This followed the settlement of the primary teachers'...

Membership numbers continue to climb.(board of directors)
December 1, 2003... NZNO'S MEMBERSHIP numbers continue to grow. The October board of directors' meeting heard that at mid October, membership had reached 34, 710. This was an increase of four percent since June 30, this year. In his report to the board,...

Committee to look at operation of hardship fund.(board of directors)
December 1, 2003... A COMMITTEE of the president Jane O'Malley, Te Runanga Aotearoa O NZNO chair Anne McNicol, and the two board vice chairs, Catherine Logan and Lesley Elliot, is to establish criteria for the operation of NZNO's hardship fund. In 1999,...

NZNO nominates members for new Midwifery Council.(board of directors)
December 1, 2003... NZNO HAS nominated three people for the new Midwifery Council, established under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. The NZNO nominees are Hamilton midwife Cornelia Roodt, a midwife from South Auckland, Helen Mary Walker, and...

Two new board members have been elected to the structural review committee, to replace the two outgoing members, Carrol Mitchell and Julie Livesey.(Briefs from the board)
December 1, 2003... Two new board members have been elected to the structural review committee, to replace the two outgoing members, Carrol Mitchell and Julie Livesey. The two new members are Allan MacDougall (Canterbury) and Helen Tuck (Bay of Plenty/Talrawhiti)....

Feedback on NZNO's 2003 conference was very positive.(Briefs from the board)
December 1, 2003... Feedback on NZNO's 2003 conference was very positive. Auckland, Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch are all being considered as possible venues for the 2004 conference.

Reinforcing the patient safety message: NZNO's patient safety campaign is backed up by a number of overseas studies. It all depends on investing in and valuing nurses.(professional focus)
December 1, 2003... SAFE STAFFING is an NZNO priority. Nurses are sick of excessive workloads, staff shortages, unpaid overtime and inadequate organisational support, all of which threaten patient safety. This has been confirmed by numerous overseas' studies....

Varied topics at perioperative nurses' conference.(college/section news)
December 1, 2003... THIRTY YEARS ago, Wellington hosted the first theatre nurses' seminar, a low key event. This year, the Perioperative Nurses' College of NZNO conference, also held in Wellington, had over 250 delegates from throughout New Zealand. The...

Gynaecology examined in Dunedin.(college/section news)
December 1, 2003... THE SECOND annual conference of the Gynaecology Nurses' Interest Group, held at Dunedin's Otago Museum in October, brought together 115 nurses for a weekend of learning, networking and merriment. MP Georgina Beyer opened the conference, and...

Nurses discuss ophthalmology issues.(college/section news)
December 1, 2003... MORE THAN 100 nurses attended the New Zealand Ophthalmic Nurses' Conference, held as part of the 35th Royal Australian New Zealand College Ophthalmologists Annual Scientific Congress and the Orthoptic Association of Australia meetings in...

New Te Runanga komiti holds first hui.(Te Runanga)
December 1, 2003... THE FIRST Te Runanga o Aotearoa national komiti meeting since the election of the new komiti was held in Hawke's Bay at the end of November. We had the pleasure of NZNO policy analyst Maori Sharon Clair joining us on the second day. The...

Profiling Te Runanga's new chair.(Te Runanga)
December 1, 2003... Ko Tarakeha te Maunga; Ko Hokianga Whakapou Karakia te Moana; Ko Tarakeha te Urupa; Ko Taupiri te Maunga; Ko Waikato te Awa; Ko Puke-i-Ahua te Urupa; Ko Hikurangi te Maunga; Ko Waiapu te Awa; Ko Taumata te Urupa; Ko Archie Wiremu McNicol raua...

Maori health adviser becomes vice chair.(Te Runanga)
December 1, 2003... Tau mai te raukura ki runga ite tihi o nga maunga e rua, a, ko Whakapunaki raua ko Taiarahia. Rere ana te wai Maori e kore e inu nga tangata, ko Ruakituri raua ko Ohinernataroa. Hoea hoea ki uta nga waka e rua, otira, ko Takitimu raua...

Enrolled nurses forced out of mental health unit.(regional reports)
December 1, 2003... DUNEDIN Jan Aitken SOUTHLAND DISTRICT Health Board (DHB): The seven enrolled nurses (ENs) working at the mental health unit are heading towards the end of their careers at the unit. Unfortunately the DHB has persisted with its plans...

Palmerston North: Lawrence O'Halloran.(regional reports)
December 1, 2003... Wairarapa District Health Board (DHB): THE DHB plans for a major site redevelopment have been submitted to the Ministry of Health for a decision on funding. Staff have been involved in consultation about the proposed redevelopment and await the...

Hamilton: Jenny Dorrian.(regional reports)
December 1, 2003... IT HAS been some time since I submitted a report. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all delegates and members for their hard work throughout the year. I would also like to thank many of you for your support when I was incapacitated...

Auckland: Chan Dixon.(regional reports)
December 1, 2003... IT'S HARD to believe another year is nearly at an end. Merry Christmas to all members and I look forward to working with you next year. I hope you get the chance to have a small holiday, even though the big New Zealand shut down doesn't extend...

Redwood Lodge members continue strike action.
December 1, 2003... NEW ZEALAND Life Care, the owner of Rotorua's Redwood Lodge, has rejected an NZNO offer of mediation. NZNO made the offer in an attempt to resolve a dispute over safe staffing and wages at the rest-home and hospital Around 65 nurses,...

The prevention and management of shoulder pain in the hemiplegic patient.
December 1, 2003... Information Source This Best Practice information Sheet has been derived from a systematic review of research entitled "The prevention and management of shoulder pain in the hemiplegic patient". The primary references on which this...