Abstract: Reveals and explores the stories of ten Registered Nurses working in Acute Assessment Units caring for clinically-deteriorating patients. Uses the perspectives of hermeneutic phenomenology to explore the meaning of nurses caring for such patients. Conducts semi-structured interviews with the RNs identifying three main themes.

Abstract: This thesis traces the journey of the author's inquiry into family members' experience of the relinquishment of the personhood of a loved one with a dementia; a journey in which she reports that her own prior understandings were significantly challenged. The study was prompted by her experience of working in the area of dementia care and hearing, in the course of the working day, comments such as 'there's nobody there' made in relation to someone suffering from severe dementia. Such comments appear to imply that the person of the dementia sufferer in some way is no longer present. They are comments which relate to the very nature of personhood. The study takes impetus from the fact that the ways in which nurses view the personhood of dementia sufferers has significant consequences for the ways in which they respond to dementia sufferers and their families. This thesis, which retells the stories of four family members who each have a loved one with a dementia illness, reveals that rather than there being a unified concept of personhood in dementia, and in spite of the fact that particular understandings of dementia and personhood dominate our cultural conversations, in their day to day lives these four family members managed and made sense of their experience through particular and different ways of looking at the impact dementia has on the personhood of dementia sufferers. Not all did, in fact, relinquish the personhood of their family member. In their lived lives, the four research participants had recourse, each in different ways, to multiple discourses of personhood. For some, in addition to loss, there was also unexpected gain. This finding necessitated and shaped further inquiry into discourse and the role of discourse in shaping, constraining and opening up possibilities for meaning, and into the two substantive areas of dementia and personhood. Nurses work closely alongside the family of dementia sufferers who are daily faced with the challenge of managing and making meaning of that situation. It is critically important that they are able to recognise, validate and support the variety of needs that family members have. Nurses, whose education is traditionally based on a biomedical framework, are nevertheless often required to mediate between different understandings. Not only do they need currency of knowledge in the rapidly changing biomedical field of dementia, but they need also an understanding of the role and the power of discursive constructions of both dementia and personhood. Such understanding will provide insight into alternate ways of understanding these concepts. However, although such understanding is critical for nurses working in this area, the author suggests that nursing literature has not brought these discussions to the fore.

Abstract: This article defines dementia, and explores recent trends in relation to why it is such a misunderstood condition in the health care setting. Within a theoretical framework of literature development, nurse client relationships, and quality of care and attitudes are analysed. Gaps, inconsistencies and consistencies are outlined, with the implications for nursing practice and education explored.

Abstract: Conducts an exploratory study to assess whether nurses at a regional base hospital have sufficient theoretical knowledge to assess and manage delirium in the clinical setting. Uses a self-administered survey based on a true/false questionnaire, and a Likert scale to assess nurses' perceived levels of confidence in detecting and managing the delirious patient. Administers the questionnaire to 130 nurses from acute adult wards.

Abstract: Cultural safety is taught in all undergraduate nursing programmes in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There is a predominance of Pakeha nurse educators in teaching this content. There is little explanation of what being Pakeha entails. This perpetuates a silence and continues the dominant hegemonic position of Pakeha in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study suggests that as Pakeha cultural safety nurse educators we examine our dominance and critique the delivery of cultural safety education. This autobiographical study undertakes to explore the Pakeha identity of a cultural safety nurse educator. The author discusses identity in the context of a globalised world, and challenges the idea of a definitive Pakeha identity. There are multiple descriptions of Pakeha, all underdeveloped and inadequate for the purposes of cultural safety education. In this study, the author uses the heuristic process of Moustakas (1990) and Maalouf's (2000) ideas of vertical and horizontal heritage to locate and present the essence of the self. In keeping with the purpose of cultural safety education, the author considers her ethnic cultural self as described by Bloch (1983) and explores Helms' (1990) theory of White racial identity development. This thesis describes the position of one Pakeha in the context of teaching cultural safety in an undergraduate nursing degree programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand. For Pakeha cultural safety nurse educators the author argues that exploration of one's heritages and location of a personal Pakeha identity is pivotal to progressing the enactment of cultural safety in Aotearoa /New Zealand.

Abstract: Reflects on how the global nursing response to the pandemic has highlighted the essential clinical skills of nursing as articulated in Tanner's Clinical Judgement Model.

Abstract: Reflects on the introduction of COVID-19 screening protocols for all patients and visitors accessing the Emergency Department (ED) of the hospital where the author was on the senior leadership team. Having just completed research into the perspectives of emergency nurses on pandemic preparedness, shows how these perspectives were incorporated into the protocols.

Abstract: Considers whether an educational intervention in which mental illness and addiction sufferers share their personal experience with nursing students results in the development of empathy and compassion among nursing students. Incorporates five workshops into the bachelor of nursing curriculum, in which students listen to the stories told by mental health/addiction patients. Gathers accounts from students of their reactions afterwards.