Abstract: This study traces the author's transition from being a mental health nurse to becoming a facilitator of an education programme, the Health and Wellbeing course, for those in recovery from mental illnesses. Within this transition, she describes a journey from disease-focused paradigms toward emancipatory paradigms, evidenced by her application of the recovery approach to her teaching. The 'recovery approach' proposed by the Mental Health Commission in November 1998, and other models of health, are explored using the methodology of descriptive/interpretive philosophical inquiry, autobiographical narrative and a dialectical research design. The author draws from the philosophies of phenomenology and existentialism to present excerpts from her journals, exemplars, poetry and artwork which illuminate epiphanies occurring as she integrates health paradigms in the design of the Health and Wellbeing course. Within this process the recovery approach is revealed as being consistent with the teaching principles of the Health and Wellbeing course. The author goes on to say that the dialectical research design reveals paradoxes and transformations in nursing, medical, psychological, and humanistic paradigms within the New Zealand socio-political context from the 1970s to 2003. The way these are integrated into her practice as an educator, becomes evident in the dialectical research cycles of being, thinking, developing a project, the encounter of teaching, making sense and communication. These cycles reveal her being in the roles of nurse and educator and the thinking through of paradigms that lead to the design and philosophy of a Health and Wellbeing course, the encounter of teaching, and the communication of insights gained. The author's main objective is to show the importance of nurses and educators developing a reflective consciousness when working with sufferers of mental illness. This reflective consciousness involves three levels: The primary level, or raw experience; the social level, or our socio-political contexts and social values, and, the realised level, insights gained about knowledge and experience.

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: The author notes that it is widely accepted that there is a global shortage of nurses, and there are many studies in the health workforce literature about the negative aspects of nurse work environments, nursing workloads, decreased job satisfaction of nurses and the impact these have on patient health outcomes. In the past five years there has also been international and New Zealand-specific research into the effects of health restructuring on nursing leadership, retention of nurses, and on patient care. Much of this research has shown that countries with very different health care systems have similar problems, not only with retention of qualified nursing staff due to high levels of job dissatisfaction, but also with work design and the provision of good quality patient care in hospitals. This dissertation explores the many detrimental effects on nurses and nursing leadership, of extensive, and continuing, public health restructuring in New Zealand. The context of this dissertation is New Zealand public hospitals, with references pertaining to medical and surgical areas of nursing practice. Health reforms have negatively impacted on patient care delivery systems, patient health outcomes, and retention of educated nurses in the workforce. In order to resolve these issues, coordinated efforts are required in New Zealand district health boards to develop and sustain effective nursing leaders, who will promote and assist in the development of strong, healthy organisational cultures to retain and support professional nurses and the ways in which they wish to practise.

Abstract: Alleviating patient suffering, providing comfort and pain relief are all central to the philosophical caring position nurses have always espoused. Despite this, patients continue to suffer pain although we have the means to provide pain relief. The author notes that research has identified that nurses have a knowledge deficit regarding pain and its management, as well an erroneous attitudes, which combined are blamed for an inability to make significant progress in this area. This study was undertaken to uncover the contextual aspects of working within a New Zealand health care institution that affect nurses' ability to manage their patient' pain effectively. It highlights the difficulties and the complicated nature of working within an institution in the 1990's health care environment, where accountability for pain is absent and where pain is often under-assessed and under-treated. By using focus group of nurses, the author notes she was able to uncover constructions on nursing practice, which, she suggests, have been missing from the literature, but prevent nurses from implementing their knowledge. Using a constructivist research, she used nurse's stories and current literature to argue one way forward in, what she terms, the pain management debacle. This study revealed a diverse range of contextual factors that prevent nurses from using their knowledge. Many of the constraints on nursing practice are the results of complex organisational structures within health reform, which have significantly affected the nurse's ability to provide quality-nursing care. One of the most important factors limiting the management of the patient' pain is the inability of the nurse to autonomously initiate analgesia. While nurses are largely responsible for the assessment of pain, they are usually powerless to access necessary analgesia, without a medical prescription. The author argues that once an initial medical diagnosis has been made, nurses are usually left responsible for patient comfort and the management of pain. To do so effectively, nurses need to able to prescribe both pharmacological and non-pharmacological measures for the patient. Presently nurses are prescribing using a variety of illegitimate mechanisms, needing the endorsement of a doctor. To fulfil this role, nurses must be adequately prepared educationally and given the authority to either prescribe autonomously, of provided with extensive “standing orders”. While legislative changes in New Zealand in 1999 extended prescribing right to a few nurses within certain areas of care, the ward nurse is unlikely to gain prescribing rights in the near future. The author concludes that a way forward may be to encourage and further develop the use of protocols for managing pain via standing orders. Standing orders are common place within nursing practice today, have the support of the Nursing Council of New Zealand and are currently under-going legislative review. An institutional commitment to developing pain protocols for nurses would recognise the nurses active role and expertise in the management of pain and facilitate expedient relief for the patient.

Abstract: An essential part of nursing practice for the nurse on the surgical floor is to relieve the discomfort of post operative pain for patients in their care. Post operative pain management encompasses a series of processes from assessing pain, providing relief, assessment of measures used to relieve pain through to documentation in the patient record. Yet literature, both internationally and from Australia and New Zealand, suggests that post operative pain continues to be poorly managed despite having the means to provide more than adequate relief. Events leading up to the commencement of this study indicated that locally, post operative pain assessment, including documentation in the patient record may be substandard. The objective of this study was to develop and test an audit tool; undertake a retrospective audit of nursing records, including nursing notes and the nursing care plan, in respect of what postoperative pain assessments nurses document in the patient record; evaluate data and make recommendations for practice. Methodology: A five part, 23 question Likert scale audit tool, designed specifically for this study was used to collect data over a period of two months. In total 40 patient records that met the inclusion criteria were audited.The results indicate that local practice reflects poor documentation standards found in other studies. The most complete recordings were those entered on specifically designed charts such as the Patient Controlled Analgesia and Epidural charts (N 28) but this did not carry over into the patient record. Despite that fact that the patient's self reports of pain is said to be the single most reliable indicator of pain, there was only four occasions when the patient's verbal response to pain was recorded. None of those responses were according to any type of pain rating scale. Evidence of evaluation following measures used to relieve pain was more likely to be recorded if pain was poorly controlled or when side effects such as nausea were experienced by the patient. The author concludes that overall the audit has highlighted many gaps in what is or is not recorded in the patient record in respect of post operative pain assessment and has highlighted the need to develop standards of practice that will improve post operative pain management practices.

Abstract: The author's interest in this study came from working as a mental health nurse with mainly older women with depression and developed from her concern that depression for older people is frequently misdiagnosed, not recognised or is under-treated. To date, research has rarely paid attention to the voices of people who have actually experienced depression and even less is known from the perspective of older women. This hermeneutic phenomenological study, informed by Martin Heidegger and Max van Manen, describes what it is like for four older women to live with depression. Multiple interviews were conducted with the participants. Heidegger's philosophical concepts of Being-in-the-world and Being-with-others structured the analysis. Depression was found to have a significant effect on the participants' Being-in-the-world. The themes that emerged were: something is wrong; the search for reasons; self-loathing; being overwhelmed by the feelings; hiding from the world; loss of self; loss of meaning; the struggle of everyday life; and living circumspectly. Being-with-others was difficult for the participants and the themes that emerged were: maintaining relationships when well; Being-alone; misinterpreting self and other people; the stigma of mental illness – society and self; and seeking understanding from other people. The author suggests that the findings have implications for nurses and other health professionals.