Welcome
to the College of Nurses Aotearoa News Update.
No. 314 24 August 2016
National
news
Health and Disability
report finds toddler given wrong vaccination
A
nurse has been criticised after administering the wrong vaccination to a
toddler in a report released today.
A
woman took her 23-month-old son to a medical centre for a vaccination. She
requested the Infanrix®-IPV vaccination instead of the Infanrix®-hexa
vaccination listed on the New Zealand National Immunisation Schedule.
Read more here
Nurse
looked at health records of friends and family
A nurse
accessed patient records including those of her friends, family and colleagues,
despite none being under her care, a tribunal has heard.
The woman,
who has permanent name suppression, was a nurse in a North Island health
service centre between November 2011 to May 2014 where she inappropriately
accessed and viewed 64 patients on 114 occasions.
Read more here
Nurses support ‘Oranga
Tamariki’
Responding
to the announcement of the new name for the government agency the ‘Ministry for
Vulnerable Children’, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) Kaiwhakahaere
says she will be choosing to use its Māori name, ‘Oranga Tamariki’.
Read more here
Hospital staff
subjected to abuse, attacks, threats
Palmerston
North Hospital staff were subjected to hundreds of unwanted sexual advances,
abuse and assaults from those they were charged with helping.
These
alarming incidents have prompted a medical union to declare enough is enough,
especially as health workers make excuses for patients' misbehaviour.
Read more here
Cancer
issues
Funding new cancer drugs extends Kiwis' lives, keep
patients out of hospital
Providing new
cancer medicines extends lives, keeps people out of hospital and saves taxpayers'
money, a new study has found.
These
findings are in line with what would be expected in the New Zealand health
system, in which the Government's drug buyer Pharmac requires greater health
benefits and/or cost-effectiveness of the medicines it approves.
Read more here
DHBs
Latest quarterly
national health targets results released
Health
Minister Jonathan Coleman says the latest health targets results show the gains
made in the previous quarter have again been largely maintained.
Read more here
Double blow for ED
adds to stress
The
Dunedin Hospital emergency department has lost its clinical leader and had its
training accreditation downgraded.
Read more here
Patients privacy
breached at Bay hospitals
One
person has been fired and another given a verbal warning after privacy breeches
at the Bay of Plenty District Health Board.
And
new figures show the number of investigations into privacy breeches this year
is already double that of the whole of last year.
Read more here
Mental
health
Young Kiwis seek
mental health help 560,000 times in a year
Kiwi
kids and teens sought help from mental health services more than 560,000 times
in the past year.
Figures
released to the Herald under the Official Information Act show
Ministry of Health-supported mental health services had 562,554 contacts with
Kiwis under 20 in the year to April. This included texts, phone calls and
face-to-face appointments.
Read more here
Hopelessness blamed for Kaitaia suicides
A Far North community leader says a spate of at
least five suspected suicides in Kaitaia reflects a pervasive feeling of
hopelesssness in the town.
Read more here
Kaitaia youth struggle
to get adult support
A
Kaitaia schoolgirl who has organised three community meetings about a spate of
suspected youth suicides in the town says she is frustrated that adult agencies
have not been more supportive.
Read more here
West Coast rallies
against spate of suicides
A
group of West Coasters fed up with losing their loved ones to suicide have
called for better mental health services in the regionAbout
60 people marched from Greymouth's Dixon Park on Saturday, including some
who had lost loved ones to suicide recently.
Read more here
Obesity
Government’s child
obesity plan flawed
The
Government's Childhood Obesity Plan is based on outdated evidence, shows the
Government values corporate profit over public good, and is unlikely to solve
the New Zealand obesity crisis, according to a new critique.
Read more here
Pharmacy
High opioid prescription
numbers a prompt for investigation
The Health Quality &
Safety Commission says figures showing a continuing increase in the
prescription of powerful opioids are a prompt for hospitals and primary health
care providers to take a close look at their prescribing.
Read more here
Public
health
Government announces
'wide-reaching' inquiry into Havelock North water
The
Government has announced a wide-reaching inquiry into how Havelock North's
water supply became contaminated, how it was handled and the subsequent
response.
Beyond
that the inquiry will also include any lessons and improvements that can be
made in the management of the water supply network in Havelock North and across
New Zealand, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson said.
Read more here
Havelock North water
crisis sparks call for all drinking supplies to be chlorinated
While
his neighbours still suffer from the country's worst case of mass water
contamination, Napier Mayor Bill Dalton says his city will fight to keep
chlorine out of its town supply.
Lower
Hutt Mayor Ray Wallace is also rejecting calls for all town water supplies to
be chlorinated in the wake of the Havelock North contamination crisis.
Read more here
Havelock North crisis:
'We don't have terrible water-borne diseases in NZ' - Jonathan Coleman, 2007
Health
Minister Jonathan Coleman opposed strengthened drinking water standards
when he was in opposition because "the reality is that we do not have
these terrible water-borne epidemics in New Zealand".
Read more here
Social
health
Cross-party
inquiry into homelessness kicks off
A cross-party inquiry into
homelessness kicks off on Monday, with the first hearing being held at Te Puea
Marae.
After the Government
blocked their attempt to open an official investigation, the Green party,
Labour and the Maori Party decided to go it alone.
Read more here
Homeless die 20 years early - study
Homeless people admitted to South Auckland's
Middlemore Hospital die on average 16 to 20 years earlier than other New
Zealanders, a new study has found.
Read more here
Telehealth
Ministry takes further
step towards electronic health records
The
Ministry of Health is taking a further step towards using technology to reduce
the number of times patients have to provide their health details to the many
different health professionals providing their treatment.
Read more here
Tobacco,
drugs and alcohol
Fetal alcohol harm bill up to $200m
Author of study assessing avoidable disorder's
impact on GDP says new action plan may not go far enough
Read more here
International
news
Junior Hong Kong nurses set for supervision in
performing risky procedures in bid to reduce hospital blunders
Retired nurses to be
rehired by Hospital Authority to oversee work of newly appointed staff
Read more here
Street team brings
healthcare directly to homeless people in NYC
Because
some homeless people are hesitant to seek out medical care in clinics or
hospitals, one organization is meeting them where they are.
Read more here
Dying on the streets: UVic study examines
palliative care for the homeless
'We were
hearing all kinds of stories, and service providers themselves were feeling
very distressed'
Read more here
Study shows eye-tracking technology improves
nursing training
A new study by researchers at the UCLA School of Nursing
shows that using eye-tracking technology could improve nursing education by
reducing the role of subjective assessments and by providing more consistent
evaluations.
Read more here
Workplace
Use this acronym to guide investigations into nurse bullying
Nurse bullying is an unfortunate reality in the
healthcare industry — 48 percent of graduating nurses expect to experience
bullying at some point in their careers, according to statistics from American Sentinel University
— and it falls on nurse leaders to look into accusations of bullying.
Read more here
5 ways hospitals can help nurses prevent violence
Hospital violence is one of the healthcare industry’s most pressing problems, and nurses have long warned they
need more support from hospital leaders to make progress
in reducing it. At
Massachusetts hospitals, nurses have developed violence-prevention protocols
that could be a model at the national level, according to a blog post from Labor Notes.
Read more here
Mindful Listening
Developing
Awareness to Listen Fully
How
often have you had a conversation with someone, and thought you were paying
attention to him or her, only to realize shortly afterwards that you can't
remember what he said? Or, perhaps you got distracted while he was speaking and
missed the message that he was trying to deliver.
Read more here
From
the Ministry of Health
Evaluation of the Ministry of Health funded suicide
prevention gatekeeper training programmes
The purpose of the New
Zealand Suicide Prevention Strategy 2006–2016 is to reduce the rate of
suicide and suicidal behaviour, harmful impacts associated with suicide and
inequalities in the prevalence of suicide and suicidal behaviour.
Read more here
Standing Order Guidelines
The Standing Order
Guidelines have been developed as a resource for health professionals working
with standing orders.
The Guidelines have been
drafted to assist issuers to comply with regulatory requirements when
developing and/or reviewing a standing order, and to assist people
administering and/or supplying under standing orders.
The Standing Order
Guidelines have been updated to reflect the 2016 amendment to the Medicines
(Standing Order) Regulations 2002. Nurse practitioners and optometrists are
added as issuers of standing orders and the requirements which govern access to
standing orders in regulation 8(a)(v) are streamlined.
The document outlines the
roles and responsibilities of health professionals issuing standing orders and
those working under standing orders. It also includes a Standing Order Template
Guide.
Read more here
Taking Action on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder:
2016–2019: An action plan
Fetal alcohol spectrum
disorder (FASD) is the umbrella term used to describe the range of effects that
can occur when a fetus is exposed to alcohol during pregnancy.
In the broadest sense, this
includes miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth, physical abnormalities and
an increased risk of negative health outcomes for the child and even his or her
offspring. However, FASD more commonly refers to a constellation of physical
and neurodevelopmental impairments experienced by people who were exposed to
alcohol during pregnancy.
This action plan aims to
create a more effective, equitable and collaborative approach to FASD. It is a
cross-agency commitment designed to build on the work that is already under way
by providing coordinated support to those on the frontline of this issue.
Rather than establishing
FASD-specific services and systems, this action plan will support the current
system to be much more responsive to the needs of individuals, families, whānau
and communities.
This action plan sets out a
high-level vision of what we want to achieve, and how we can achieve that
vision at a practical level.
Read more here
The above information has been collated for the
College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc by Linda Stopforth, SNIPS and is provided
on a weekly basis. It is current as at Tuesday
23 August 2016
If you have any feedback about content - what parts
are most useful or what you would like added - please email admin@nurse.org.nz
For more up
to date news and information follow SNIPS at:
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