Abstract: The author examines how writing shapes her practice and how she nurses, her way of being and doing. She notes that “as human beings we cannot be broken into subsets, my personal and professional being inform each other, therefore you will find woven into the fabric of this paper my personal and professional becoming united by the dominant thread of nursing”. The paper is structured using the different phases of her career as a staff nurse, nurse practitioner and charge nurse. In each section she has linked the stories of children and young adults with reflections on her writing and how it has impacted her practice. She goes on to say that question and reflection are vital adjuncts to nurses' development as individual practitioners and to the profession. They facilitate journeying past the superficial into the deep of a relationship with patients and colleagues. She identifies a responsibility as nurses is to engage with the individual and help them find a space where they can regain a sense of hope and personal power. This paper follows the author's journey, leaving her with a clearer understanding of who she is and how she nurses.

Abstract: This paper explores the nature of compassion and posits it as a moral virtue that requires the nurse to act in the presence of suffering. Compassion is defined in relation to suffering and reciprocity, and distinguished from sympathy and pity.

Abstract: The author takes a storytelling approach to describe her advancing practice as a registered nurse in a rural context. She adapted a theoretical 'reflective learning through storytelling' framework, from McDrury and Alterio (2002). The framework includes the concepts of reflection, learning, knowledge and experience which is related to professional practice and one's self.

Abstract: The intention of this heuristic study was to explore and discover the essence of the positive influence of the natural environment on the human spirit. The study quest was identified as a central concern that evolved from the author's personal experience of spiritual awakening in the natural environment and an interest in the concept of connectedness in nursing care and practice. The study also focused on the self of the nurse and the qualities of holistic nursing care. Guided by heuristic methodology developed by Moustakas (1990) the thesis traces a journey of discovery. Using conversational interviews, six nurses were asked to describe their experiences of their spirit being positively influenced in the natural environment. These nurses were also asked if these beneficial experiences had any flow-on effect to their nursing practice. From these interviews various commonalities of experience were identified as well as some experiences unique to the individual participants. The participant knowing was articulated using Reed's (1992) dimensions of relatedness in spirituality as a framework. Reed describes these dimensions as being able to be experienced intrapersonally, interpersonally and transpersonally. A substantive body of nursing and non-nursing literature was explored to support the participant knowing and provide strength to the discussion. The study discovered that the human spirit is positively influenced in the natural environment. The three actions of personal healing and wellbeing in the natural environment, knowing self – knowing others and sustaining self in nursing practice were valued by the participants as contributing to the quality of their nursing care. In bringing together spirituality, the natural environment and nursing, holism was discovered to be the significant and connecting constituent. The study has some implications for the discipline of nursing that are also discussed by the author.

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: This article outlines some key aspects of the practice of a number of nurse educators and researchers, and their commitment to the needs of their specific region. The group has been based at the Waikato Institute of Technology (WINTEC) over the last decade and have worked collaboratively across primary health, cultural safety, and child and family health domains of the nursing curriculum. They share a common philosophy underpinned by notions of diversity and health equity. The philosophy informs their theoretical inquiry, practice and research interests, and pedagogical concerns. In this article, the nurse researchers begin by situating themselves within the region, its people, and influences before moving into a consideration of the wider political and policy environment. They then consider the destabilising effects of cultural safety education and the tension between biculturalism and multiculturalism in their context. Finally, they reflect on how these ideas inform their work with postgraduate child and family nurses.

Abstract: The author investigates the premises that form the basis of nursing practice in acute care. Assumptions about patients and caregiving are often at odds with each other. The origins of these tenets are mapped from Florence Nightingale through to present nursing theorists. Overlapping areas of nursing and medical care in the acute care setting are examined, and the conflict that can arise between traditional nursing care and the expected medical nursing role is examined. He argues that the challenge for acute care nurses is to find a balance between normative nursing and the medical model.