Abstract: This article examines the knowledge and power relationships between the medical profession and nurses during the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that the 1901 Nurses' Registration Act allowed doctors to exert control over the nursing profession and that the hierarchal structure of the profession contributes to the culture of control and surveillance.

Abstract: This contemporary historical study examines the health sector environment of the 1990s and the turn of the 21st century, and assesses the policy initiatives undertaken to advance nursing in New Zealand during that period. The authors look at the conditions and forces that saw nursing achieve a new emphasis on advanced and expanded scope of nursing practice, less than a decade after the commencement of New Zealand's first pre-registration nursing degrees.

Abstract: This paper traces the emergence of categories of nurse over the last hundred years from the time that the Nurses Registration Act became law in 1901. Insights from the work of Michel Foucault are utilised to show how nurses and nursing have been historically shaped and positioned. It is suggested that the recent endorsement by the Nursing Council of New Zealand of the concept and title of 'nurse practitioner' represents an opportunity for nurses to imagine what might be constructed for their roles.

Abstract: Oral history accounts of the care of the hospitalised child in the context of family are used to argue that current practice paradoxes in family-centred care are historically ingrained. The article looks at the post-war period, the intervening years, and current practice, centred on the changing concept of motherhood throughout that time. The conflict between clinical expediency versus family and child needs is explored.

Abstract: The purpose of this research has been to trace the development of the nurse practitioner role in New Zealand. Using a discourse analytical approach informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the study foregrounds the discourses that have constructed the nurse practitioner role within the New Zealand social and political context. The author suggests that discourses of nursing and of medicine have established systems of disciplinary practices that produce nurses and physicians within defined role boundaries, not because of legislation, but because discourse has constructed certain rules. The nurse practitioner role transcends those boundaries and offers the possibility of a new and potentially more liberating identity for nurses and nursing. A plural approach of both textuality and discursivity was used to guide the analysis of texts chosen from published literature and from nine interviews conducted with individuals who have been influential in the unfolding of the nurse practitioner role. Both professionally and industrially and in academic and regulatory terms dating back to the Nurses Registration Act, 1901, the political discourses and disciplinary practices serving to position nurses in the health care sector and to represent nursing are examined. The play of these forces has created an interstice from which the nurse practitioner role in New Zealand could emerge. In combination with a new state regime of primary health care, the notion of an autonomous nursing profession in both practice and regulation has challenged medicine's traditional right to surveillance of nursing practice. Through a kind of regulated freedom, the availability of assessment, diagnostic and prescribing practices within a nursing discourse signals a radical shift in how nursing can be represented. The author concludes that the nurse practitioner polemic has revolutionised the nursing subject, and may in turn lead to a qualitatively different health service.

Abstract: In this thesis the nursing roles in respect of tuberculosis in New Zealand from 1928 to 1966 are identified, and then examined by contextualising them in relation to the changing social, political, demographic, scientific and technological environments in which the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis took place. The history of the various institutions is described in order to show some of the circumstances that led to the evolution of the roles of dispensary nurse, district nurse, school nurse, public health nurse, sanatorium nurse, and hospital nurse. 1928 to 1966 covers a sufficiently long period of intensive activity and change in the detection, treatment and research of pulmonary tuberculosis in New Zealand, to enable comparisons between nursing roles to be made. It was found that nurses had an individualised approach to their work. This was defined by the physical environments within which they worked, whether it was a hospital, sanatorium, dispensary, school or in a patient's home. Also, the medical treatments advocated and implemented by the medical practitioners, the rules and regulations which governed the various work areas, and the availability of staff, funds, facilities and resources all had an impact upon how nurses were able to work and how their respective roles developed. In addition, some of the factors which contributed to nurses getting tuberculosis and the initiatives to improve the nurse's conditions of work are examined, because these had an impact on the performance of the nurse's work and evolution of her role. Apart from practical nursing care, nurses also had a role in the on-going inspection, monitoring, notification, emotional support of patients and families, morale boosting and education. Each role had these components. The differences were in the time and emphasis given to each.

Abstract: The author points to the oppression of colonisation living on in the daily lives of colonised people, and goes on to say that it is vital for nurses to understand the effects of that oppression, as well as the restrictive impacts, and dislocation from one's land and culture to-day. Nurses come from both the descendants of colonisers and the colonised. This thesis is a journey and a quest for insights into the impacts and significances of colonisation by looking at historical and socio-political contexts that have bearing on the health of colonised people who remain mostly powerless and marginalised. It is prompted in response to a cultural safety model which advocates that nurses should become familiar with their own background and history in order to be culturally safe in practice. This reflective autobiographical account is a personal effort and provides the foundation for an exploration of issues during nursing practice encounters, from a colonised ethnic minority perspective. The method was informed by Moustakas research approach and Johnstone's Reflective Topical Autobiographical process. The selection of specific events are deliberate, to make visible some of the many barriers that exist within our health structures as pertinent issues for non-dominant cultures that remain on the margin of our society. Maori issues provide a contrast and became a catalyst for the author while working for kaupapa Maori services. The intention of this thesis is to generate new knowledge about what it means to be a nurse from an ethnic minority working in a kaupapa Maori mental health service, and to encourage other nurses to explore these issues further. Some recommendations are made for nurses in the last chapter.