Abstract: Travels to Australia and Canada to examine public health efforts in those countries to inform pregnant women about the risks of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), particularly among indigenous populations. Studies regional initiatives around NZ to inform the establishment of a preventive and assessment programme in the Bay of Plenty DHB.

Abstract: This article presents the findings of an interpretive study that explored and documented the meaning and impact of nurse participation in performance appraisal interviews. Data gleaned from nine New Zealand registered nurses employed by a single district health board provide evidence that nurses are often disappointed by the process of performance appraisal. Although they believe in the potential value of performance appraisal interviews, they seldom experience the feedback, direction, and encouragement necessary for an effective appraisal process. It is suggested that changes to the current professional development program and its accompanying performance appraisal will require skilled commitment on the part of nurses, managers, and the employing organisation to improve and develop the assessment and promotion of nursing practice.

Abstract: Recruits Emergency Department (ED) nurses to participate in three semi-structured interviews. Conducts thematic analysis of interview transcripts to identify the effects on clinical skills, and what facilitated participants' learning.

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: The authors report on a recent study investigating the statutory role of responsible clinician. Statutory roles under mental health legislation offer mental health nurses a means of having advanced practice skills recognised, as well as contributing to improved access to services. There is a proliferation of roles intended to develop nursing readership, but in most cases they are not primarily clinical roles. The concept of “advanced practice” has become a means of developing clinical leadership roles in nursing. Research on responsible clinician role is presented along with the results of a survey of the 11 Registered Nurses practicing as responsible clinicians, five senior nurses from each of the 21 district health boards, and the Auckland Regional Forensic Psychiatry Services (n = 121). Respondents were asked whether the responsible clinician role was a legitimate one for nurses and whether they were motivated to attain or maintain that role. They were also asked which competencies for the role they believed they met, their perceptions of credentialing processes and the educational requirements needed to achieve the role. A clear majority of the respondents felt the role of the responsible clinician was a legitimate advanced practice role for mental health nurses. Despite this, some respondents expressed ambivalence about taking on the role. The research highlighted deficits in knowledge and skills that could become a focus of education for advanced practitioners seeking appointment as responsible clinicians. Deficits included some assessment skills, knowledge of a range of interventions and knowledge of other legislation affecting mental health legislation.

Abstract: The author performs a literature search on the topics of risk assessment, dangerousness, aggression, and violence in order to determine an evidence-based approach to risk assessment of patient violence towards others. This is set in the context of possible expansion in the scope of practice of mental health nurses, and the prevalence of nurses being assaulted by patients. In the absence of reliable and valid nursing risk assessment measures, the approach suggested here focuses on the use of observation skills to detect behaviour antecedent to physical assault, and the ability to adapt evidence to specific clinical settings.

Abstract: Illustrates the impact of the pandemic and children's experiences of lockdowns through their artwork. Describes a cross-cultural project in which members of the International Network for Child and Family-Centered Care collaborated to elicit children's responses to being locked down, compiling their artistic expressions into an eBook. Invites child and family nurses to use the insights provided to inform their interactions with children.