Abstract: This research explores the issues and experiences of mental health nurses who experience or have experienced mental illness. This project was prompted by the author's concern for colleagues and friends in this situation. The research topic was approached using a mix of critical ethnography and action research principles. Five mental health nurses who all work for the same district health board were interviewed about their experiences of being mental health professionals with mental illness and the issues that arose from this. The themes that emerged from this research are: the reactions of nurse colleagues, the effects on participants' own mental health treatment, employer responses, professional experiences and issues and strategies for coping. Discussion and recommendations focus on the need for improvements to the responses that mental health nurses with experience of mental illness encounter in their workplace. Recommendations from this research encompass suggestions for both individual and organisational education, action and change.

Abstract: This thesis reviews the role of primary health care nurses, who have an opportunity to play a unique role in teaching, touching and empowering families with newly discharged pre-term babies. Birth of a baby earlier than 37 weeks gestation ushers in a period of uncertainty and stress for parents. Uncertainties may centre on whether their infant will survive and what ongoing growth and developmental issues their infant will face.

Abstract: This research aims to clarify the knowing and wisdom that inform clinical nurse educators' responses through unpredictable situations. The author referred to philosophical literature on the notions of tacit knowledge, practical wisdom, smooth activity and the Unready-to-Hand experience. She created an explanatory framework and utilised this in a thought experiment by reflecting on personal experiences. To add clarity to these reflections, two layers of interviewing with nurse educators teaching in practice were carried out. The first layer was an interview with eight clinical nurse educators who in their role experienced Unready-to-Hand situations. The second layer consisted of four clinical nurse educators who volunteered to be involved in more in-depth interviews. An interpretive analysis of these clinical nurse educators stories illuminated the “Unready-to Hand as Adventure”, highlighting the uncertainty and energy associated with opening in the adventure, not knowing what will unfold, yet committed to remaining engaged and doing the best they can. Through the process of attuning to difference, accessing and deciphering knowing, nurse educators create meanings of situational complexities. By preserving the ideals of good practice and engaged caring, nurse educators salvage learning by creating opportunities for learning and teaching.

Abstract: This report presents the findings and recommendations derived from a collaborative action research pilot project undertaken alongside the implementation of two nurse prescribing practicum courses. The students, teachers and supervisors participating in year long Masters' level prescribing practica at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) were interviewed about their perceptions, concerns and actions relating the first time implementation of their respective practicum papers. Research findings suggest that the practicum implementation has been successful overall, however there is a need to refine delivery, and to review current funding arrangements.

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: The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological was to unveil a deeper meaning and understanding of gerontology nursing, thus contributing to its value and worth as a speciality area of nursing. Conversations with four gerontology nurses were taped, transcribed and then analysed using van Manen's (1990) approach to researching lived experience. From the analysis, four cardinal elements emerged: true acceptance, personal knowing, being present, and being alive. Those four cardinal elements were reworked and further analysed to reveal three central aspects or essences of gerontology nursing. These essences were the centrality of temporality, the interconnectedness of human relationships, and the significance of the lived body. Temporality is demonstrated by nursing application of objective, or clock time, as well as subjectively in regards to the lived time of the clients. Interconnectedness is the lived human relationship between nurse and client and is represented by commitment, presencing/giving of self, connecting, and knowing the client holistically. The third essence is corporeality, which is portrayed by the gerontology nurses' distinguishing characteristics and their perception of the lived body of the nursed. The final analysis unveiled caring for the body, the act of seeing, and the joy of care as emergent essences of gerontology nursing. Language of nursing in relationship to 'basic nursing care' is critiqued for its potential to devalue gerontology nursing and, by association, old people.

Abstract: This qualitative research project explored the experiences of nurse educators who sought to assess aspects, which could be related to facilitation of emotional competence, in nursing students. Focus groups were conducted in three different educational institutions, offering a Bachelor of nursing degree. Each of the participants had a teaching and assessment role within the school of nursing. The contributions of the nurse educators and their interactions were audio taped, transcribed and then later, analysed using thematic and focus group analysis practices. From the analysis of the experiences of the nurse educators, four predominant themes arose which capture the areas of importance to the participants. Student nurses can develop emotional competence by critically reflecting during classroom and clinical experiences. Continuous consideration must be made within each practicing area of nursing, of the environmental and relational challenges which inhibit or facilitate nurse's ability to practice with emotional competence. Educators and practicing nurses, who work alongside students, must uphold the expectation that emotional competence is a requisite ability and provide opportunities to foster emotional growth and skills to resolve conflict within the culture of nursing. A common view shared by the educators was that the profession of nursing needs to have a clear understanding of what constitutes emotional competence. Strategies to realistically incorporate emotional competence into the educational curriculum and competency based assessment opportunities within nursing education are required. Suggestions are presented from which undergraduate nursing education can facilitate development of emotional competence with those students working toward becoming a registered nurse. Emotional competence is suggested as an essential learning outcome in the movement toward transformative nursing education and a collaborative nursing profession.