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Nursing in New Zealand

Chief Nurse Newsletter, September 2008

Farewell to Marion Clark, CEO of the Nursing Council

On September 4th I joined with many representatives of our profession to bid farewell to Marion Clark as CEO of the Nursing Council. Many tributes were made concerning Marion’s contribution to the development of NZ nursing over the decade she was in post. For my part I acknowledged the useful work she did in positioning Council to be able to regulate practice under the provisions of the HPCA Act. This included augmenting the Council infrastructure; bringing on additional staff, and upgrading the technical capabilities of the organisation.

Self-regulation – a prize to be valued

Of course, as Marion moves on, the Council does not have time to stand still! The ability for our profession to self-regulate is indeed a prize to be valued. Looking around other international jurisdictions it is often hard to separate out the regulatory function from the national nursing organisation, and indeed the government. Whilst some players in workforce management might see advantages in these situations, the separation of regulator as a protector of public interest is to be valued. Our Nursing Council is able to work to ensure that the nurses we educate and deploy throughout the health care system are fit for purpose and well able to provide care to a satisfactory standard, truly living up to Nightingale’s prerequisite to do no harm. As an independent agency working in partnership with the Ministry of Health, employers, and professional organisations, as we respectively drive forward policy underpinning practice roles required for the future, Council plays a most useful role as arbiter of public safety, and long may it do so.

The role of nursing organisations

Just as the Nursing Council cannot stand still in acting as a champion and leader with respect to the public, other organisations need to move on apace so far as their leadership of nursing professional interest is concerned. We have a range of nursing organisations working on behalf of a range of nurses, some big and some not so. However, all have a role in not just getting the best conditions for their members, but in contributing to nursing policy and practice development. As nursing care becomes ever more complex, and more is demanded of our profession so far as innovative roles and health care solutions are concerned, so representative organisations have to coalesce member opinion and work with employers and policy makers to develop sensible strategic solutions.

We will see many new roles and responsibilities develop within nursing and it is important that these groups collaborate on the derivation of practice standards and means of determining competence underpinned by robust models of continuing professional development anchored in the workplace. Only through constructive working between nursing organisations, employers, and ourselves at the Ministry, can we present our regulatory authority with the evidence they need to sleep easy so far as ‘NZ Nursing’ being responsible for itself is concerned.

Nursing leadership

Moving on from ‘organisational leadership’, I would like to offer some opinion as to the responsibility of us all as leaders within nursing.

I have previously mentioned in these newsletters my convictions regarding the significant and important role of nurse leaders within our DHB environments and the need to reinforce these positions nationwide with specific input from primary health care. I would like to extend this concept to all situations where nurses are looking for advice, guidance, support and a sense of direction, and others are grappling with the challenge of fulfilling leadership roles. This surely should be a healthy balance? On the one hand people who are in need of some guidance and on the other those who are ready to assume the mantle of leader. But does it always pan out like that?

This idyll of symbiosis between individual, team, and leader does not always manifest itself so beautifully within our profession. It probably doesn’t in many other professions either, just that they are rather more adept at hiding conflict, whereas nursing seems to have an internationally consistent penchant for washing its dirty linen in public. Of course I am speaking here of notions like ‘tall poppy syndrome’ and ‘horizontal violence’. I am not suggesting for one minute that these attributes are endemic in New Zealand nursing, but they are there. Rather than acknowledge our leaders and colleagues who have gone out of their way to represent our profession and share their learning and acquired knowledge, there is often an inclination to knock them back.

Theoretical rationalisation of these behaviours can be found elsewhere, suffice to say that a common philosophy would see them as characteristic of an oppressed group having a sense of powerlessness. I would agree that every now and again it may seem that nursing gets a raw deal, but we really do need to get over such sentiments if they are still lurking out there. Respecting nurse leadership and those who are willing to contribute to policy formulation and critique, academic endeavour and the development of new roles should not be viewed as a bad thing. Rather, if we don’t have the time, skills, or inclination to engage in these activities ourselves we should be going all out to offer whatever support we can to those who do.

I look forward to welcoming our new CEO of the Nursing Council, whomever the members of that organisation determine is the best fit for this crucial role. I will of course work with them and the Council as we move our profession ever forward in our desire to give the best possible care to our population. But just as significantly, I look forward to continuing to work with every nurse leader in our country, be they a national figure or a pioneer at local or regional level. We need to support, nurture, listen to and celebrate our nursing leadership. There is not time or room for complacency or compromise on this count.

Mark Jones
Chief Nurse

Page last updated: 23 September 2008