Abstract: Highlights well-child and family health programmes in the US, Canada, and the UK. Provides an overview of the programmes and their clinical effectiveness, focusing on the themes that emerged. Part of the Margaret May Blackwell Scholarship Reports series.

Abstract: The author reconsiders the meaning of expert, specialist and advanced practice. She proposes that they are distinctive and complementary aspects of every nursing role and suggests a set of attributes for each. Expertise is discussed in terms of the quality of performance, speciality in relation to particularity of performance, and advanced practice with regard to the level of performance.

Abstract: This article outlines the development of the neonatal nurse practitioner role in New Zealand as an example of one advanced practice nursing role. A model of how nursing culture changes to include roles that incorporate components that historically have been considered the domain of other health professionals is proposed. This article outlines some of the issues surrounding the neonatal nurse practitioner role, including the educational requirements for this role in New Zealand.

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to present a phenomenological exploration of the experiences of four woman who have had an adolescent child die of cancer. Using the method of hermeneutic phenomenology, as described by van Mann (1984,1990) the study drew on the stories of four woman. From their stories eight emerging themes became apparent.The analysis of the themes is described under the following headings:- wanting to protect; wanting to be with; maintaining normality; feeling positive and hopeful; facing finality; realizing that death was imminent; coping with the common reality; and interacting with health professionals.Further interpretation of the emerging themes revealed “hope expectations” as the phenomenon of concern that captures these mothers' experiences. The hope expectation phenomenon reveals how the mothers coped with adversity, differing hope expectations in the common reality, oscillating hope expectations throughout the journey and hope expectations inspired by the health professionals.The outcome of this work is to provide professional, especially nurses, with insight and knowledge of the maternal experience of caring for the dying adolescent. It is hoped this research will contribute to the body of nursing knowledge and influence the care of parents who experience the trauma of caring for their dying adolescent child

Abstract: This research utilized a focus group methodology to discover what nurses in clinical practice considered 'caring' care meant for them. Six registered nurses volunteered to participate in the project. They practiced over a wide variety of real settings within the public hospital, which provided both acute and elective surgical and medical services, including an extensive elderly population. Taking these important 'caring' statements, I then explored with the group what factors in their work environment hindered of enhanced their identified 'caring' care in clinical practice as did their overseas counterparts. This study also highlighted the impact the health reforms had on the individual clinical practice at this hospital. The effects of the institutional changes in response to the health reforms were far reaching at both the personal and professional level. Caring is an important concept found in nursing practice. It has been widely documented By nurse scholars, researchers and nurse authors that care is at the core of nursing practice.Some have even referred to care as being the heart of nursing. The finding from the present research indicates the importance nurses place on caring in their day to day encounters with patients. It also demonstrates how nurses express their care and their perceptions of the importance of care has in the clinical practice

Abstract: This text begins with a discourse analysis of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth edition, 1994 – DSM -IV- to illustrate the discursive construction of mental disorder. The analysis identifies how productivity, moderation, entariness and rationality are constructed by this psychiatric discourse as the fundamental attributes of normality. It is argued that this discursive construction of normality has particular implications for the subject positions available to women.The text explores how those subject positions are constituted by analysing the narratives of women who have been diagnosed as having a mental disorder. Its object is to explore how the categories 'mental disorder' and 'women' are constituted; the effect this has on some women's experiences; and to offer a feminist interpretation of those experiences. The text explores the meaning of these women's experiences and proposes that their responses can be regarded as tactical responses to the non-recognition, or disconfirming recognition, accorded to the subject positions available to them.The women's tactical responses although taking different forms, reveal some commonalities in their responses to a lack of recognition for their performances: shame regarding the body which marks them as women; a sense of meaningless and emptiness in the available performances; a sense of themselves as objects for the use of others; passive performances as self-protective tactics; a need to suppress anger; and a tension between cultural expectations of normality and their own subjective experiences. The tactical responses that these women had employed take the form of over-conformity, withdrawal and resistance. They reflect that Sass (1992:58) describes as attempts to escape the 'form of the real'. It is the women's body which establishes her engendered subjectivity and it is through the body that the tensions related to her expected performances emerge. Each women's tactical response is imbued with multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings that may represent their ambivalence in relational to the cultural expectations for productive, moderate, unitary and rational performances. To enable the meaning of the women's distress to emerge it is necessary that it be recognised by interpretations that reflect their multiple and contradictory form.Alternative readings of these women's tactical responses position the desire for recognition as central. It proposes that it is necessary to pay attention to both the literal and figurative functions of language. The possibility of 'advancing our understanding of social life' (Gergen, women constructed as mentally disordered. These readings of the narratives require an understanding of the context and construction of the narrator's life and opens up the possibility for multiple understandings that do not necessarily privilege productivity, moderation, unitariness and rationality.By attending to the significance of the women's narratives this text proposes that the DSM-IV's (1994) construction of mental disorder of effectively marginalises women's experiences of their culturally determined subject positions. It acknowledges the need to understand how women symbolize their distress in a way that creates and communicates meaning