Abstract: Identifies the processes used in those general practices that consistently reach the Ministry of Health 95 per cent immunisation target for eight-month-old infants. Considers how the practices manage parents and caregivers who are reluctant to immunise. Invites practices in a number of different community settings to participate in the study over a ten-week period, using a mixed-method approach. Analyses quantitative data from the National Immunisation Register using Excel, gathering qualitative date from face-to-face or phone interviews, and anysing these using both SSPS and NVivo 10.

Abstract: Illustrates the impact of the pandemic and children's experiences of lockdowns through their artwork. Describes a cross-cultural project in which members of the International Network for Child and Family-Centered Care collaborated to elicit children's responses to being locked down, compiling their artistic expressions into an eBook. Invites child and family nurses to use the insights provided to inform their interactions with children.

Abstract: In 1973, two trial pre-registration nursing education programmes were piloted in New Zealand polytechnics. These represented an alternative to traditional hospital-sited schools of nursing. The establishment of nursing education in the tertiary sector marked a radical challenge to the cultural heritage of apprenticeship-style nursing training associated with paternal and medically-dominated health institutions. This thesis offers a Foucauldian and feminist poststructuralist analysis of discourses employed by fifteen senior nursing educators in the comprehensive registration programmes between 1973 and 1992. The women employed to teach in the comprehensive programmes faced unique challenges in establishing departments of nursing, in developing curricula that would promote a reorientation of nursing and in supporting candidates to attain their nursing registration. Through semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis methods, a set of unique characteristics shared by this group of early leading comprehensive nursing educators has emerged. The women's narratives were underpinned by discourses that centre around the valuing of education as a vehicle for emancipation and an upholding of a legitimacy of difference in nursing educators' work. The participants upheld the importance of clinical practice skills and drew on their own student nursing experiences as incentives for reforming nursing education. These nursing educators conceptualised an idealised type of graduate, and commonly employed an heroic metaphor to describe their experiences as senior comprehensive educators. Their engagement with such discourses and their shared characteristics demonstrate unique re-constitutions of power, knowledge and relations with their colleagues and clients throughout the education and health care sectors. The author proposes that these traits characterise the women as strategic and astute professionals who successfully negotiated the construction of comprehensive nursing programmes as a legitimate and transformative preparation for nursing registration.

Abstract: In 1991 a new labor relations regime was introduced which overturned a 100 year old pattern of 'historic compromise' between capital and labor. In a labor market structured by gender and race, this major change in bargaining arrangements has already widened the pay gap between men's and women's average earnings and reduced union coverage, particularly among women workers in low paid clerical, sales and service work. This study, documenting recent feminist struggle in the area of labor relations, provides a first look at the collective organisation of women under two different labor relations regimes.In the 1980s a particular conjunction of occupational unionism and feminism in New Zealand facilitated some significant improvements in the situation of women in paid employment. The thesis examines feminist strategies which led to a Working Women's Charter adopted by unions, an increase in women holding office in unions, complaints procedures for sexual harassment, standing committees to represent women and Maori in the union movement, and legislation to implement equal employment opportunity programmes and equal pay for work of equal value. It looks at how the institution-alisation of bargaining by occupation supported industrially weak workers and underpinned the unionisation of women, which occupational unions and women's own strategies of organisation provided the autonomous 'political space' to organise around issues specifically relevant to women.At the core of the thesis are three case studies of unions representing three of the occupations in which women are concentrated: clerical work, nursing and cleaning. It examines commonalities and contrasts in the industrial situations covered by these unions, and differences and similarities in the strategies they adopted. The focus of research, conducted between late 1990 and early1993, was the views of officials of these unions in the context of radical change in the regulation of wage bargaining. Particular attention was given to the way issues relating to women workers were prioritised in unions led by women or by men.These case studies are contextualised in chapters examining the position of women in the labor market, feminist organisation within the union movement, and corporatist change in labor relations legislation. In tracing the development of feminist unionism in the 1980s, the thesis considers the strategies of the NZ Council of Trade Unions and looks at what the radical change in bargaining structure will mean for collective organisation by women in paid employment

Abstract: In 1997, Advanced Mental Health Nursing Programmes were funded nationally by the Clinical Training Agency using the funds made available subsequent to the 1996 Mason Report. The training leads to an award of either a post graduate certificate or diploma awarded by a tertiary education provider.A review was conducted with the aim to monitor the impact on service provision of advanced mental health nurse practitioner training. This was done by obtaining feedback through using an agreed standard questionnaire from course participants and mental health service providers.In seeking to learn more about the impact of these programmes, the CTA identified the following key issues:- what effect the courses may have had on mental health workforce make-up, skills and retention.- perceptions of programme delivery and content.- the impact on service delivery.Overall findings are shared which highlight that the course was seen as well organised and participants and service providers would recommend it to their colleagues. The greatest effect of the course appeared to be in developing more understanding of clinical supervision. Participating in the course had also led to positive changes in relationships with the clients and colleagues for more than three quarters of the group.The provision of an Advanced Mental Health Nursing Programme in 1997 has had many positive effects. The funding strategy and delivery models that have evolved may provide a useful template for other nursing specialty areas

Abstract: In 2003 the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act was introduced and established separate regulatory authorities for nursing and midwifery. This study is designed to explore the experiences of dually registered practitioners affected by this divide, as now there are two separate and possible paths, and two corresponding sets of competencies to fulfil. The design for this qualitative descriptive study utilised the written and oral narratives of three practitioners affected by this professional regulation and demonstrated its impact on their career development. Individual storytelling, as narrative, provided a theoretical lens aiding insight into their experience and pattern of decision making. In addition, symbolic consideration of the study data was provided by collective storytelling via the perennial myth of the hero journey. Shifting professional ground following the Health Practitioners Competence Act 2003 generated a focus for the inquiry into practitioners' modes of adjustment. For the practitioners in the study, transition between the occupational roles of nursing and midwifery comprised the possible career trajectories. A status passage, as the process of change from one social status to another, is described and includes the transitional experience of anticipation, expectation, contrast, and change. The author suggests that the findings from this research provide illumination of the nuances of professional decision making as a lived experience, and highlight how these practitioners dealt with shifting meaning, values, awareness, choices, and relationships. Aspects of group agency and identity, change management, and professional role transition were revealed. Life pattern, revealed through narrative, was an important research construct for exposing the ways in which the participants negotiated change, and displayed the function of their thinking and reasoning through dilemmas. Perception of individual and group identity revealed attitudes of esteem to the dominant discourse, and exposed dynamic tension between work patterns and life stage. Renegotiating arrangements of personal and professional commitment resulted from this dynamic interplay, and the relationship to stress and burnout was explored.

Abstract: In 2004, Plunket nurses from eight areas around New Zealand participated in collecting data for a research project on health needs assessment practices. This project aimed to examine risk factors identified by Plunket nurses, what areas of health need considered to be priorities; grading of health needs; and how closely the results of health need assessment aligned with the individual clients' deprivation score. The researchers examine the assessment of health needs against the use of the Deprivation Index, which indicates a specific population in a specific area, as a funding model. This study appeared to show there are two distinct groups of clients assessed as high needs: those with risk factors such as family violence and severe parental mental illness, and who may live in an area of 1-7 deprivation; and those with multiple risk factors which include poverty, low education, and/or reluctance to access services and support, and who usually live in dep 8-10 areas. This research supports the anecdotal evidence that significant health needs exist outside the lower deprivation areas.

Abstract: In light of the current challenges facing the nursing workforce, the author proposes a way forward to capture and utilise the challenges to bring about positive change.