Marlow, S. A. (2007). A voyage of grief and beauty: A phenomenological study of the experience of supporting a family member with an intellectual disability who is dying in a community setting. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This thesis reports on a research project which explored the phenomenon of supporting a family member with an intellectual disability who is dying in a community setting. The research purpose was to enhance professional understanding of what it is like to encounter this lived experience. Literature back-grounding the phenomenon and philosophical and theoretical constructs embraced by the researcher are outlined. An explanation is given of the hermeneutic phenomenological methodology which was utilised. The main method of collecting research data was through conducting five open-ended interviews with participants who had supported a dying child or sibling. The participants' family members were aged between 3 and 52 years old at the time of their deaths. Their specific intellectual disabilities included Down syndrome, a metabolically induced disorder and a non-identified syndrome. The family members had died from a variety of terminal illnesses and in a range of community settings. Interpretive analysis was achieved through reflexive journaling and hermeneutic intuiting of interview transcripts and field notes. The research findings have been subjected to rhetorical consideration in the light of further literature and poetic texts. Research findings are expressed metaphorically as groups of boulders representing themes and sub-themes. Three major themes were revealed as having impacted on the river voyage shared by participants and their dying family members. These were Interlocked Companionship, Search for New Balance and Permeable Interaction. An assessment is offered of the strengths and weaknesses of the research project. The thesis concludes with recommendations for reflective practice, evidence based practice, service development and areas of future research.
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Woods, M. (2008). Parental resistance. Mobile and transitory discourses: A discursive analysis of parental resistance towards medical treatment for a seriously ill child. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This qualitative thesis uses discourse analysis to examine parental resistance towards medical treatment of critically ill children. It is an investigation of the 'mobile and transitory' discourses at play in instances of resistance between parents, physicians and nurses within health care institutions, and an examination of the consequences of resistance through providing alternative ways of perceiving and therefore understanding these disagreements. The philosophical perspectives, methodology and methods used in this thesis are underpinned by selected ideas taken from the works of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu and supported by relevant literature in the fields of media, law, children, parenting, caring, serious childhood illness, medicine and nursing. It is argued that from an examination of interview based texts, parental resistance is an omnipresent but transitory occurrence that affects many of the interactions between the parents of seriously ill children and clinical staff. It is maintained that within these interactions, the seeds of this resistance are sown in both critical decision making situations and in everyday occurrences between doctors, nurses and parents within healthcare institutions. Contributing factors to parental resistance include the use of power games by staff, the language of medicine, forms of symbolic violence, the presence or absence of trust between parents and medical staff, the effects of medical habitus, and challenges to the parental role and identity. Overall, it is proposed in this thesis that parents who resist treatment for their seriously ill child are not exceptions to the normative patient-physician relationship.
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Litchfield, M., & Laws, M. (1999). Achieving family health and cost-containment outcomes: Innovation in the New Zealand Health Sector Reforms. In Cohen,E. & De Back,V. (Eds.), The outcomes mandate: New roles, rules and relationships. Case management in health care today (pp. 306-316). St Louis: Mosby.
Abstract: The chapter presents the research findings of the 1992-1993 Wellington Nurse Case Management Scheme Project as a distinct model of nurse case management, which introduced a role and form of practice of a family nurse and a diagram of the service delivery structure required for support and relevant for the New Zealand health system reforms.
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Litchfield, M. (2005). The nursing praxis of family health. In Picard, C & Jones, D., Giving voice to what we know (pp.73-82). Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Jones & Bartlett.
Abstract: The chapter explores the process of nursing practice and how it contributes to health, derived from research undertaken in New Zealand. It presents the nature of nursing research as if practice – the researcher as if practitioner – establishing a foundation for the development of nursing knowledge that would make a distinct contribution to health and health care. It includes the philosophy and practicalities of nursing through the use of a case study of nursing a family with complex health circumstances.
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Stewart, A. (2000). When an infant grandchild dies: Family matters. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This research undertaken by a nurse working with bereaved families, aimed to explore how grandparents, parents and health/bereavement professionals constructed grandparent bereavement when an infant grandchild died unexpectedly. The 26 participants, living in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, included 16 grandparents and 6 parents from 11 families, in addition to three health/bereavement professionals. A constructivist inquiry informed by writings on nursing, storying and postmodernism was used. Through an exploration of the methodological and ethical issues that arose and were addressed during the study, this work adds to knowledge of how constructivist inquiry can be used in nursing and bereavement research. In addition, the context of this research as a partnership with multiple family members contributes to the ongoing debate about whether participation in bereavement research may be harmful or therapeutic. Conversations in this research formed a series of interviews and letters, which led to the development of a joint construction and each individual's story. A grandchild's death was constructed as a challenge which grandparents faced, responded to and then managed the changes that arose from the challenge. The context of their bereavement was seen as underpinned by their relationship as “parents of the adult parents” of the grandchild who died. This meant that grandparents placed their own pain second to their wish to support and “be with” the parents. Outside the family was where many grandparents found friends, colleagues or their community forgot, or chose not to acknowledge, their bereavement. This work shows how some grandparents help to create a space within the family which maintains a continuing relationship with the grandchild who died.
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Chenery, K. (2001). 'Can mummy come too?' Rhetoric and realities of 'family-centred care' in one New Zealand hospital, 1960-1990. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This study explores the development of 'family-centred care' in New Zealand as part of an international movement advanced by 'experts' in the 1950s concerned with the psychological effects of mother-child separation. It positions the development of 'family-centred care' within the broader context of ideas and beliefs about mothering and children that emerged in New Zealand society between 1960 and 1980 as a response to these new concerns for children's emotional health. It examines New Zealand nursing, medical and related literature between 1960 and 1990 and considers both professional and public response to these concerns. The experiences of some mothers and nurses caring for children in one New Zealand hospital between 1960 and 1990 illustrate the significance of these responses in the context of one hospital children's ward and the subsequent implications for the practice of 'family-centred care'. This study demonstrates the difference between the professional rhetoric and the parental reality of 'family-centred care' in the context of one hospital children's ward between 1960 and 1990. The practice of 'family-centred care' placed mothers and nurses in contradictory positions within the ward environment. These contradictory positions were historically enduring, although they varied in their enactment.
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Dickinson, A. R. (2004). Within the web: The family/practitioner relationship in the context of chronic childhood illness. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This study explores the phenomenon of the relationships between practitioners and families who have a child with a chronic illness. Using a heremeneutic phenomenological method informed by the writings of Martin Heidegger [1889-1976] and Hans-Georg Gadamer [1900-2002], this study provides an understanding of the meaning of 'being in relationship' from the perspective of both families and practitioners. Study participants include ten family groups who have a child with a chronic illness and twelve practitioners from the disciplines of nursing, medicine, dietetics, physiotherapy and speech therapy who work with children with chronic illness. Narrative audio-taped interviewing was the means by which the participants told their stories about times that relationships worked well and when they did not. These stories uncover the every day realities of 'being in relationship' and provide another understanding of the relationship between family and practitioner.The findings of this thesis suggest that chronic childhood illness 'throws' families and practitioners together into a web of relationships that must work for the sake of the child. The relationship is primarily conducted between adults. Children are usually excluded. In order to understand and manage the child's illness, practitioners and families 'go around' and act 'in-between' relationships. While the quality of the relationship from the family perspective is not essential to the chronic illness journey, relationships are more successful when practitioners recognise the uniqueness of each family web. The nature of the relationship is often simple, yet it co-exists with complexity. This thesis proposes that a 'companion relationship' between practitioners and family may offer a more effective and satisfying way of working. It also challenges practitioners to consider the voice of children within health care relationships.
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Davidson, L. (2000). Family-centred care perceptions and practice: A pilot study.
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McNamara, N. (2007). The meaning of the experience for ICU nurses when a family member is critically ill: A hermeneutic phenomenologcial study. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This study provides insight into the experience of being an ICU nurse and relative of a critically ill patient. Analysis of data from interviews of four ICU nurses who had experienced having a family member admitted to ICU brought up several themes. These included: a nurses' nightmare, knowing and not knowing, feeling torn, and gaining deeper insight and new meaning. Recommendations for organisational support for ICU nurse/relatives, and education for staff are made, based on the findings.
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McClunie-Trust, P. (2010). Negotiating Boundaries: The Nurse Family Member Caring for Her Own Relative in Palliative Care. Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: This research illuminates the challenges of living well within one's own family as a nurse caring for her own relative who is dying of a cancer-related illness. Developing a deeper awareness of the consequences of this caring work has been the central focus for inquiry in this research. Nursing requires epistemologies that encompass new ways of understanding how we live within our own families and communities and practice as nurses. The theoretical framework that guides this research interprets the French Philosopher Michel Foucault's (1926-1984) critical history of thought as an ethical project for nursing. It uses conceptual tools developed in his later writing and interviews to draw attention to how discursive knowledge and practices constitute subjectivity in relations of truth, power and the self's relation to the self. The first aspect of the analysis, landscapes of care examines the techniques of discourse as relations of power and knowledge that constitute nurse family members as subjects who have relationships with their own families and other health professionals. The second aspect analyses care of the self and others as self work undertaken to form the self as a particular kind of subject and achieve mastery over one's thoughts and actions.As an exploration of the complex and contradictory subjectivities of the nurse family member, this research illuminates the forms and limits of nursing practice knowledge. It shows how nursing is practised, and the identity of the nurse is created, through intellectual, political and relational work, undertaken on the self in relation to others, as modes of ethical engagement.
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Rosieur, J. (2010). An exploration of family partnership approaches to enhance care delivery and improve healthcare outcomes to young families within their communities.
Abstract: Margaret May Blackwell Trust Travel Study Fellowship 2009/2010.
This report is an exploration of some current international trends and tools in the delivery of services supporting families with young children that aim to utilise a partnership approach between health providers, families and their communities. The MMB scholarhsip for 2009/2010 included six weeks of international travel in order to consult with a range of people in realtion to services provided to parents with young children in their various communities. My proposal was to explore current policies supporting Family Partnership (FP)approaches in health services; trends relating to FP approaches in practice; tools supporting FP practice for clinicians; as well as recent FP training and initiatives.
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Cassidy, S. (2014). Proactive nursing practice and research to address improvement of health care needs of vulnerable children and their families. Wellington, N.Z.: Nursing Education and Research Foundation (NERF).
Abstract: Observes best practice in caring for infants/children with Epidermolysis Bullosa in Asia, Europe and Turkey, and makes recommendations for NZ practice. Compares the NZ approach to pressure injuries with that in Europe. Describes the treatment of superficial and partial thickness burn injuries in NZ. Part of the Margaret May Blackwell Scholarship Reports series.
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Tautua, P. (2002). Exploring primary health care nursing for child and family health (specifically targeting 0-5 year's age group). Margaret May Blackwell Travel Study Fellowship for Nurses of Young Children 2002. Auckland, N.Z.: Nursing Education and Research Foundation (NERF).
Abstract: Compares the delivery models used by primary health-care nurses in Auckland for follow-up services aimed at Pacific children discharged from hospital with preventable illnesses, with similar services and programmes in Tonga and Samoa. Also compares NZ and Pacific Island programmes to promote immunisation and breastfeeding. Part of the Margaret May Blackwell Scholarship Reports series.
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Mockford, A. (2009). The exploration of systems and technologies to enhance the healthcare of children under five. Margaret May Blackwell Travel Study Fellowship Reports. Waikato, N.Z.: Nursing Education and Research Foundation (NERF).
Abstract: The well known premise that 'healthy children grow into healthy adults' should reinforce the need for us to engage with parents and caregivers to ensure that we support them with meeting their child's health care needs. This scholarship enabled the author to see what the UK, Sweden, the US, and Canada were doing to strengthen and support children under five and their families across the continuum of care. Part of the Margaret May Blackwell Scholarship Reports series.
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Macfie, B. (2003). The exploration of primary health care nursing for child and family health : Margaret May Blackwell Travel Study Fellowship, 2002. Margaret May Blackwell Travel Study Fellowship Reports. New Zealand: Nursing Education and Research Foundation (NERF).
Abstract: Reports the approach to child and family health nursing in Canada, the US, and the UK. Divides the report into health policy, primary health care services, nursing education and the development of primary health care nurse practitioners, and nursing leadership in primary health care. Part of the Margaret May Blackwell Scholarship Reports series.
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