Welcome to the College of Nurses Aotearoa News Update.
No. 564, Wednesday 13 October 2021
Weekly news round-up of nursing and health information in New Zealand and internationally
NATIONAL NEWS
Covid-19: Nurse Raewyn and her team swing into action at Lake Karāpiro | Stuff.co.nz
Clinical lead Raewyn Wilson, left, is in charge of the team at the pop-up testing station at Lake Karāpiro. Wilson normally works as a clinical nurse manager at …
Covid-19: More than 1700 nurses sign open letter urging people to get vaccinated
More than 1700 nurses have signed an open letter urging all eligible people in Aotearoa to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Registered nurse suspended after intimate relationship with ex-prisoner she met inside jail
A registered nurse has been suspended after being caught having an intimate relationship with a former prisoner who she met behind bars.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Vanuatu nurses stranded and poor in Solomon Islands | RNZ News
The rest are volunteer nurses who came to Vanuatu several years after the respective governments came to an agreement amid a nursing shortage.
Payment to retain aged-care nurses
The federal government is providing bonus payments to aged-care nurses in a bid to encourage them to stay in the sector.
Unique Nurse Identifier (UNI) Highlights Contributions to Patient Care Delivery
A UNI is a “defined code or series of characters, represents an individual nurse within healthcare technology systems and across healthcare organizations.” The authors of this article deem implementation of a UNI to “leverage across systems and technologies will provide evidence of nursing’s value to patient care delivery from multiple data sources” and “connect data across these systems to provide evidence of nursing’s value to patient care delivery, making the effects of nursing assessments and interventions (such as fall prevention) more visible.”
Thousands of overseas nurses and doctors to reinforce strained Australian health system - 9News
The Federal Government is planning to ease COVID-19 international border restrictions to bring in thousands of doctors and nurses to bolster health systems in New South Wales and Victoria.
AGED CARE AND ELDERLY
Report paints bleak picture for Māori suffering dementia
The latest Dementia Economic Impact Report strongly reinforces the fact that dementia constitutes a major – and still rapidly growing – problem for Aotearoa New Zealand, with Māori and Pasifika set to take the heaviest blow
COVID-19 / CORONAVIRUS
ICU plan for 'endemic' Covid-19 won't work due to staff shortages, expert says
New Zealand’s plan for tackling Covid-19 in hospitals won’t work outside an elimination strategy, a leading intensive care specialist says.
New Zealand able to surge Covid-19 ICU capacity by risking planned care - Health Minister
There are fears from within the health industry that the ICU system will not cope if the Delta outbreak escalates but the health minister says anyone with Covid-19 in New Zealand will be cared for
Covid-19: Chinese Kiwis have lowest vaccination rates in over-65 age group
Chinese Kiwis over the age of 65 have the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rates in their age group, according to Ministry of Health data.
The low rate among over 65s comes despite the fact Asian New Zealanders have the highest vaccine uptake of any major ethnic group overall.
Covid-19 vaccine certificates: How they might work and what questions remain
The government will need to give more detail on how vaccine certificates will work for those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons, a computer systems engineer says.
Covid-19: Middlemore Hospital on trialling rapid antigen tests
One of the first medical experts to trial the latest test in the Covid-19 toolkit explains how rapid antigen tests are used and whether they are accurate.
Inaccessibility of rural healthcare reflected in low vaccination rates - expert
The West Coast is behind the rest of the mainland when it comes to uptake of the Covid vaccine, down as low as 71 percent for first jabs, compared to 80 percent in the rest of Te Wai Pounamu.
Covid-19: Rural vaccinations falling behind urban counterparts, research reveals
Rural Covid-19 vaccination rates are more than 10 per cent behind their urban counterparts, according to the latest data.
Effective NZ vaccination campaigns ‘must include’ Māori, Pacific leaders
The calls for New Zealanders to get vaccinated are becoming more urgent by the day as covid-19 embeds itself in the community.
MIQueue: Health sector 'mystified' over struggle to get staff into NZ
New Zealand has had 18 months to prepare for endemic Covid-19, but many in the health sector feel their most important weapon has seemingly been left out of the equation. Both new and existing healthcare professionals are struggling to get into MIQ. Louisa Steyl reports.
Covid-19 NZ: Sweeping vaccine mandate for teachers and most healthcare workers | Stuff.co.nz
The Government will require that teachers and most healthcare workers get the ... Even vaccinated teachers in Auckland will need to return a negative test ...
Covid-19: Union calls mandatory vaccination for high-risk health staff 'right thing to do'
The senior doctors’ union says a move to mandate Covid-19 vaccination for high-risk health and disability workers is the “right thing to do”.
Vaccine mandate could stretch already thin midwife care
Midwives worry pregnant women could be left in lurch if maternity carers can't work because of the vaccination mandate.
Are our emergency departments Covid fit?
Emergency doctors throughout the country have been surveyed about how prepared they feel their respective hospitals ED facilities are equipped to cope. The results make for grim reading with specialists highlighting significant and worrying gaps in hospitals' ability to cope with the spread of infection.
Covid-19 NZ: Singapore, the country that decided to let Covid in
What is it like to go from no Covid to thousands of cases? Keith Lynch explains what’s going on in Singapore and considers the lessons New Zealand can learn.
Imagine a 1pm Covid briefing in mid-December. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern walks out – wearing a mask, of course – and announces some good news: nearly 85 per cent of the country is now fully vaccinated.
'Could get totally out of control': Covid-19 modelling paints worrying picture for South Auckland
According to modelling carried out by the Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB), if border restrictions are loosened for arrivals from countries with high Covid-19 numbers, South Auckland will see between 1000 and 1400 cases a week - even if vaccination rates get to 90 percent.
Health leader says anti-vax church leaders harming Māori
A health leader has blasted anti-vaccination church leaders for spreading harmful messages at a hui discussing Māori vaccination efforts.
Covid-19: Frontline hospital workers warn patients will die without boosted staff levels
Patients will die with doctors “constantly” compromising care as the chronically understaffed health system battles Covid-19, a top ICU doctor has warned, despite repeated assurances hospitals are well-prepared.
HEALTH IN/EQUITY
'Rainbow community faces discrimination, inequities in healthcare'
Many members of the Rainbow/TakatÄpui community feel uncomfortable and discriminated against when engaging with the healthcare system.
The lethal, unconscious biases in our health system
OPINION: Pasifika community leader Tuala Tagaloa Tusani of Auckland was recently discharged from hospital after being treated for Covid-19, and sent back to a quarantine facility, despite having difficulties breathing.
MAORI HEALTH
Maori 'dished out pills to mask chronic pain', study finds
MÄori adults who experience chronic pain are being prescribed painkillers at the expense of best practice treatments and are not being offered referrals to specialists, research from the MÄori community health provider, Tu Kotahi MÄori Asthma and Research Trust and the University of Otago, Wellington has found.
MENTAL HEALTH
World Mental Health Day: We need to talk about Pasifika
OPINION:Today marks World Mental Health Day and the theme for this year is “Mental Health in an unequal world”.
For most Pacific Island Nations, the global commemorative event hits close to home as the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in unemployment for many Pacific Islanders, putting more pressure on breadwinners to find other alternatives in feeding their families.
MIDWIFERY / MATERNITY
Student midwives are already looking at quitting, saying they should be paid for placements
Student midwives say they are already considering quitting the profession over poor pay and conditions.
They say the training programme’s structure is unsustainable and are calling to be paid for the 2400 hours of work experience they complete during their degrees.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH REPORTS
Standards Mapping Analysis
30 September 2021
This official mapping analysis compares previous standards with the 2021 Ngā Paerewa Health and Disability Services Standard, showing which criteria have changed and which have stayed the same.
Healthy Eating Guidelines for New Zealand Babies and Toddlers (0-2 years old)
30 September 2021
This publication provides the Ministry’s evidence base for advice about babies and toddlers food and nutrition needs. The document is written for health practitioners and others who provide advice on nutrition for babies and toddlers.
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
Health practitioner experience of Health and Disability Commissioner investigations.
Wilkinson Jill, Marshall Chris (2021)
Journal of Primary Health Care 13, 213-221.
https://doi.org/10.1071/HC21026
INTRODUCTION: The New Zealand Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC) Act 1994 was designed to protect the rights of consumers and provide a fair, simple, speedy, and efficient resolution to complaints. No recent studies have been published about the health practitioner experience of HDC investigations following a patient complaint, and none that include nurses and midwives.
AIM: To use a restorative inquiry framework to understand the impacts and needs of health practitioners arising from an event that led to an investigation by the HDC during the last 10 years.
The article below is not freely available but may be accessed through databases and libraries to which readers have access
The nurse navigator: Broker, boundary spanner and problem solver
Clare M. Hannan-Jones, Geoffrey K. Mitchell, Allyson J. Mutch
Published:October 01, 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colegn.2021.09.006
Collegian (Articles in Press) 2021
Background
The Queensland Health nurse navigator service is an innovative model that has recently emerged as a way of bridging gaps in care and supporting care coordination for patients with highly complex care needs. The translation of key principles into practice, and how nurse navigators operationalise their role in the care of individual patients in a highly complex health system while engaging a diverse team of health care providers, requires further understanding.
Aim
To explore how nurse navigators in Queensland operationalise their novel roles
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 of 12 October 2021
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