It is proactive regulation.
It is about working together – to protect public safety. To this
end our engagement with colleagues internationally is becoming
more important to ensure that our operations are aligned with
best-practice regulatory models. The Council has set a strategic
goal to demonstrate national and international leadership in
nursing regulation. It has often been said that New Zealand
punches above its weight and it is pleasing to see that we
are recognised as contributing internationally in our sphere of
endeavour. It is a practical objective because it is congruent
with our pursuit of excellence and it enables us both to learn
and to contribute. We were very pleased in 2012-2013 to be
able to assist our colleagues in Vanuatu to develop scopes of
practice, competencies and a code of conduct for nurses.
Collaboration is important not just across the profession
but also at an interdisciplinary level. The number one
recommendation from the salutary report into the failings of the
Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom
was for the fostering of “a common culture shared by all in
the service of putting the patient frst”. We are increasingly
cognisant of this and the past year has seen the Council
work to broaden its relationships with other health practitioner
groups that work alongside nurses. The introduction of nurse
prescribing and the consultation on that also provided the
opportunity to talk to our colleagues, particularly in midwifery,
medicine and pharmacy.
I am proud that we have been able to manage our regulatory
operations effectively and effciently for an annual cost of only
$110 per nurse. This is signifcantly less than other health
professionals pay for regulation.
We would not be able to do this without a great team working
together for a shared purpose. I particularly want to thank our
former Chair. One of the greatest challenges at the end of March
was fnding a ftting way to farewell Dr Margaret Southwick, who
has been hugely infuential in her wisdom, vision and practicality
around regulation. Like many great leaders she is also very
humble and we thank her for her generous contribution. I also
welcome Dr Deborah Rowe to the position of Chair and
appreciate the way she has embraced the role.
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9
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Report from the Chief Executive/Registrar
renew on time can turn up at work and go online and rectify the
situation immediately.
I want at this point to thank particularly my staff for their
openness to change and their embrace and ownership of the
goal of quality improvement. It is perhaps unusual to describe
a restructure primarily as exciting, but it has been energising as
well as demanding and what it will eventually do is free us up to
do more of the big-picture forward thinking and planning that we
want to do in our pursuit of best practice regulation.
I am pleased to report that we have put a lot of effort in the
past year into improving our engagement not only with nurses
but also with health consumers and people who represent
the public.
The new Code of Conduct, published in July 2012, provided
a particular focus for that engagement and was developed
following extensive consultation. Particular effort was made to
engage young people in that consultation both as high users of
health care and because raising their awareness of the Council
will have long-term benefts. The Code itself also serves to raise
public awareness of what can be expected from nurses and
provides guidance for nurses. It is important because it is the
self-regulation of individual nurses, who practise according to
the standards in the Code and who monitor the care delivered
by themselves and others, that keeps the public safe on a daily
basis. (See page 9.)
The Code also afforded us a vehicle to go out and talk with
nurses. We have met more nurses face to face in the past
year than ever before and I want to thank nurses for the
stimulating and challenging conversations that we had and the
helpful illustrative identifcations of actual scenarios they had
encountered. The demand for engagement on the Code is bigger
than we have the capacity to meet and it has been pleasing to
see others, including employers, professional organisations and
nurse educators, sharing our resources and the load in meeting
this demand.
In working with nurses to raise awareness about potential areas
of diffculty, we are working together to anticipate and avoid
problems. Ultimately this may reduce the number of disciplinary
situations – for example, over 40% of disciplinary cases in recent
years have involved breaches of professional boundaries, and the
guidelines on these, published alongside the Code, have been
well received. We are also working with international colleagues
on a project comparing disciplinary events with a view to
identifying common problem areas and reducing breaches.
Carolyn Reed
CHief executive
I am pleased to report that we have
put a lot of effort in the past year
into improving our engagement
not only with nurses but also with
health consumers and people who
represent the public.