Abstract: The stories of the women who live and work in rural settings in New Zealand have begun to reveal unique contributions that they have made to their families and community. This research study evolved from a trend the researcher observed as a district nurse providing community palliative care in rural New Zealand; that the majority of carers of those who are terminally in home-settings are in fact women. This qualitative study aimed to explore through guided conversational interviews the experiences of four women who have cared for their terminally ill partners who have subsequently died. The study investigated if these women's experiences were comparable to that of other women in existing palliative care literature. This research project focused particularly on elucidating the women's experience of intertwining the role of partner and caregiver. Heidegger's hermeneutic philosophy informed the methodology because he focused on what it meant to 'be' rather than 'how we know what we know'. The project focused on the meanings the women made of this dual role in their lives. Women already in the role of partner were now faced with the added responsibility of caregiver to meet the complex needs of their loved one. Usually they had no training to prepare them for this experience. The study reveals ways in which the visiting palliative care nurse becomes very important to them. The women's own voices reveal the high level of respect for their partners and address the harsh realities, revealing poignant and striking concerns in their lives. These stories are shared with the intent of enriching nurses' and other health professionals' understanding of the women's experiences. The author notes that understanding these women's experience is not only a way of honouring these remarkable women but more widely it will inform and possibly transform practice through guideline and policy refinement.

Abstract: School staff are a conduit by which children and families can access the public health nursing service and the public health nurses can access children and their families. The author notes that, to benefit children, public health nurses need more than knowledge of health issues; they need to understand how to work well with staff from the education sector. A good professional relationship between public health nurses and school staff will therefore ultimately result in a benefit to children's health. This thesis reviews the literature using an interpretive lens to examine the position of public health nurses and schools. It argues that public health nurses need to access expertise from other sources besides nursing in order to develop and sustain the skills of relating professionally to staff from the education sector. It proposes collaboration as a model of public health nursing practice with school staff but recognises that further research on inter-sectorial collaboration is necessary.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the discourses of scientific mothercraft and their implications for the nurse-mother relationship, drawing on the author's recent research into surveillance and the exercise of power in the child health nursing context. The application of Foucauldian discourse analysis to the texts generated by interviews with five New Zealand child health nurses confirms that this paradoxical role has never been fully resolved. Plunket nurses primarily work in the community with the parents of new babies and preschool children. Their work, child health surveillance, is considered to involve routine and unproblematic practices generally carried out in the context of a relationship between the nurse and the mother. However, there are suggestions in the literature that historically the nurse's surveillance role has conflicting objectives, as she is at the same time an inspector and family friend.

Abstract: This article examines a growing number of cases in New Zealand in which parents and guardians are required to make life and death ethical decisions on behalf of their seriously ill child. Increasingly, nurses and other practitioners are expected to more closely inform, involve and support the rights of parents or guardians in such situations. Differing moral and ethical values between the medical team and parents or guardians can lead to difficult decision making situations. The article analyses the moral parameters, processes, outcomes and ethical responses that must be considered when life and death ethical decisions involving children are made. It concludes with a recommendation that nurses should be recognised as perhaps the most suitable of all health care personnel when careful mediation is needed to produce an acceptable moral outcome in difficult ethical situations.

Abstract: The author notes that responses to questions from dying people and their families are as individual as each nurse, patient, family member, or situation. This is well recognised and an unspoken truth in palliative care practice. This paper explores the subjective nature of knowledge in palliative care generated through capturing moments of practice and subsequent reflections. This demonstrates how the author uses her model of care to open a space that enables the person and their family to find meaning from their experience and articulate what they need at the time. The author identifies her interest in the paradoxical reality of knowing and not knowing and describes how that paradox contributes to her role in supporting individuals' needs within their realities.

Abstract: A paper intended to inform paediatric nurses and influence service policy and management, adapted from a presentation at an inservice education study day for nurses at Wellington Hospital. The paper grew out of the findings of a small research project undertaken by the author as part of nursing practice in a paediatric ward of Wellington Hospital. The observations of the stress in the experience of infants and parents and the ambiguities inherent in the relationships between parents and nurses were the basis for arguing for changes in nursing practice and ward management.

Abstract: An analysis of the challenges for the nursing profession of the Government's health reforms. The findings of the 10-month Wellington Nurse Case Management Project 1991-1992, including the description of family nursing practice, what it achieved for health and the service delivery model that would position family nurses in the health reforms were used to provide an exemplar for the nuyrising contribution to health policy for the health reforms. The paper identified a vacum for the reorientating of health care provision to patients/clients and health need and the call to nursesw to take leadership in goving direction to the reorientation.

Abstract: An overview of the model of nursing practice and nurse roles derived through a programme of nursing research in the context of the policy and strategies directing developments in the New Zealand health system. The emphsis was on the health service configuration model presented diagrammatically to show the position of a new role of family nurse with a distinct form of practice forming the hub.