Nursing
Nurses form the largest clinical group of the mental health and addiction services workforce. They are pivotal in the delivery of services and the care that they deliver has a significant impact on the health outcomes of people and their families who require services.
The nursing programme provides strategic direction on leadership priorities for mental health and addiction nurses. The nursing programme will achieve this by a range of projects and activities detailed below. This activity aims to strengthen both nursing leadership and practice within the district health board (DHB), non-government organisation (NGO), primary health care (PHC) environment and professional bodies.
Te Pou also produces Handover, a quarterly electronic nursing newsletter about mental health and addiction nurses.
Nursing leadership
All nurses take on a leadership role and have a key role in leading the changes required to improve the health outcomes of service users. The challenge for nursing workforce development is to ensure the nursing workforce is adequately prepared for current and future service and remains robust and resilient.
The clinical lead - nursing role, currently held by Anne McDonald, will:
- be flexible and incorporate feedback from stakeholder groups and provide links to national workforce development strategy
- provide direction for the changes required to deliver future services and reflect the needs of the current and future nursing workforce.
The clinical lead – nursing, leads the coordination and implementation of Mental Health Nursing and its Future: A Discussion Framework (Ministry of Health, 2006) and to strengthen nursing leadership infrastructure nationally. This framework gives direction on how the key actions will be progressed by nursing leaders in district health boards, non government organisations and primary health organisations through nine recommendations.
- Leadership.
- Mental health nurse practitioners.
- Standards.
- Skill mix.
- Clinical career pathways.
- Professional supervision.
- Education.
- Research.
- Recruitment and retention.
Useful links
Nursing professional bodies
- Te Ao Maramatanga - New Zealand College of Mental Health Nurses
- New Zealand Nurses organisation - Mental Health Nurses Section
- DANA - Drug and Alcohol Nurses Australasia
Other useful links
- New Zealand Nursing Council - governs the practice of nurses
- Nursing in New Zealand - Ministry of Health
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Advanced Practice Nursing Strategy for the Addiction Treatment Sector:A Discussion Document
This discussion document was led by Dr. Daryle Deering for Matua Raki. This document provides the context and rationale for a national strategy to implement advanced practice roles, including nurse specialist and nurse practitioner in the addiction treatment sector. The contribution that advanced practice nurses can make to clinical leadership, improving access, quality of care and outcomes for clients and their families and whanau is identified as well as the contribution of an extended clinical career pathway to nursing recruitment and retention. A set of recommendations are proposed requiring collaborative action at national and regional levels.
