Abstract: This thesis used a Heideggerian Hermeneutic approach to explore the experiences of registered nurses who act as preceptors to undergraduate student nurses. The researcher interviewed fifteen volunteer registered nurses twice as preceptors to investigate their experience. The data generated was audio-taped and analysed. Four dominant themes emerged. The first, 'Becoming attuned – the call', related to registered nurses responding to the call to be preceptors to students in their clinical placement. The second, “The emerging identity of being-as preceptor: keeping the student in mind”, related to preceptors cultivating their own identity as preceptors as they worked with students in the world of nursing practice. The third, 'Assessing where the student is at: the preceptor and preceptee working and growing together', related to a constant evaluation by preceptors of students' knowledge, readiness to learn, and the provision of learning opportunities. The fourth, 'Preceptors as builders of nursing practice through teaching reality nursing', facilitated the preceptee's experience of the real world of nursing practice. An overall constitutive theme: 'Preceptors as the safeguarders of the practices of nursing', emerged as the essence of the experience.

Abstract: A study of work patterns on a surgical ward

Abstract: The focus of this thesis is the practice of the nurses employed in the Native Health Nursing Scheme in New Zealand from 1911 to 1930. These nurses were a vanguard movement for change in community nursing services as they established a new role and developed innovative ways of practicing nursing while claiming greater autonomy and accountability for nurses who worked in community settings. Consequently they contributed to an increase in status for nurses in New Zealand.The Native Health Nursing Scheme was established by the Health Department to replace the Maori Health Nursing Scheme, an initiative by Maori leaders for Maori nurses to provide nursing care for their own people. The original scheme had foundered amid under-resourcing, a lack of support from hospital boards and administrative chaos. Government policy for Maori health was openly assimilationist and the mainly non-Maori Native Health nurses carried out this policy, yet paradoxically adapting their practice in order to be culturally acceptable to Maori.Their work with the Maori people placed the Native Health nurses in a unique position to claim professional territory in a new area of practice. As they took up the opportunities for an expanded nursing role, they practiced in a manner which would develop the scope and status of nursing. The geographical isolation of their practice setting provided the nurses with the challenge of practicing in an environment of minimal administrative and professional support, while also offering them the opportunity for independence and relative autonomy. Obedience, duty and virtue, qualities highly valued in women of the day, were expected especially in nurses. These expectations were in direct contrast to the qualities necessary to perform the duties of the Native Health nurse. The conditions under which these nurses worked and lived, the decisions they were required to make, and the partnerships they needed to establish to be effective in the communities in which they worked, required courage, strength, organizational ability and commitment

Abstract: The concepts of self care of health (the goal of self care) are explored in relation to the self care nursing model. It is a basic premise of this model that the client be involved to the fullest possible extent in regarding or developing self care skills. It is proposed that individuals differ in respect to their readiness of such involvement and effort in their own health work and, hence, inability to benefit from the application of the self care nursing model. The study aimed at developing a means of identifying and predicting these differences. It was hypothesised that the individuals perceptions and beliefs about heath, his attribution about the location of blame for illness and the extent to which he perceives himself as having control over the contingencies of his behaviour, would all systematically influence his readiness to engage in self care. A health questionnaire designed to obtain data on individual health related beliefs and practices was constructed. This was mailed to a random sample of non-academic staff from one of the universities. A combination of univariate and multivariate analyses of the 86 completed questionnaires showed four major variables to be significantly interrelated. The pattern of relationships which emerge between responses to other items in the questionnaire cast further light on the complex determinants of health behaviour. Of particular interest is the suggestion that the way health is defined is a crucial factor. Use of the principal axes method of factor allowed a shortened version of the original questionnaire to be produced. The profile yielded by scores on this instrument, not only describes the client in terms of four major health related variables, but can also be used to predict readiness to benefit from a self care nursing approach

Abstract: This study identifies, describes and generates a theoretical explanation of what it means to be a Nurse educator in New Zealand in the 1990's. It explores individual experiences within the broader social context. Sixteen participants from three Schools of Nursing in New Zealand were interviewed over a four month period. Constant comparative analysis of data eventuated in the identification of four conceptual categories named as : being a teacher, settling down, finding a place and coping with change. They were then drawn into the core category – Being – in- Becoming. Being – in- Becoming, means in this study, that a person is the Nurse teacher simply because that person has taken on the work of a teacher. In being a teacher, the person is adapting, changing and learning how to become a teacher. Being – in- Becoming, is a process which is on going, never ending, and constantly changing. The essence of this study is that the teacher's experience of Being – in- Becoming. is influenced by personal development and the way the person comes to 'know' about the world of Nursing education who is also intimately connected to the way Nursing curriculum is defined and experienced by individual teachers. These findings have implications for Nursing education , in recognition of teacher's concerns, background meanings and problems which influence a person's experience of being a Nurse educator. Expectations that feelings should be 'managed' therefore ignored is consistent in a group which claims caring as the essence of Nursing practice. Excessive workloads are constantly cited as a major problem for worker. The organisation has the responsibility to acknowledge the human experience of those who work within this area and to undertake to respond in ways which can improve the situation for all