Abstract: Chronic lung disease in neonates requires long term hospitalisation and more particularly “unitisation” of the baby. The particular issue of concern related to the effect of chronic lung disease on the neonate's family; psychologically, socially, and economically. This small study examines these concerns from the parent's perspective

Abstract: This study was designed to explore the perceptions of Nurse Tutors, of their first two years following appointment to teaching positions, in a small regional Polytechnic . There was particular emphasis on factors they believed enhanced or impeded their performance, in the first two years of their employment.It was hoped the project would serve as a springboard for their development of support to assist Nursing Tutors during the first two years in their employment.The purpose of the study was not to examine the formal induction process, or the role of the staff development unit. Instead it aimed to focus on the experience of the Nursing Tutors within the Nursing school, and associated practicum teaching.An essentially qualitative approach was adopted. The aim being to discover patterns in the data from the research, and explore these themes with reference to relevant literature. Case study was chosen as the design framework for the study.Participants in the study were five Nurse Tutors who had joined the Polytechnic during the last two years and volunteered to participate in the study.Data was gathered by interview based on critical incidents, identified by participants. Themes identified from interview transcripts are discussed with reference to relevant literature. These themes indicated that tutors looked forward to their new role with anticipation, but that initial teaching experience was somewhat negative, and they did not feel well prepared. An important issue was congruency between the Nursing Curriculum (with focus on care), relationships with students and staff, and institutional constraints. The tutors coped with multiple demands, the three worlds of the Polytechnic , Health Care system and home (and for some degree study!). Participants were actively seeking strategies for successful teaching and able to reflect on aspects they wished to change. Although there were common elements , each participant demonstrated individual strengths and needs.The study concludes with suggestions for future action, including appropriate preparation prior to initial teaching, attention to initial workloads, exploration of buddying, discussion of what constitutes a safe, caring, learning and teaching environment and the relationship to the Nursing curriculum. It is suggested that collaborative sessions in order to share expertise in teaching and learning and/or action research may assist in support of new tutors (and ultimately benefit all staff)

Abstract: This study focussed on nursing practice in action. The research goal was to identify nursing-relevant dimensions within a person's experience of being a hospital patient undergoing elective surgery. In order to discover and conceptualize the underlying processes which are present as patients are nursed through this experience, an open question was posed – What is happening here? A qualitative research method ws the most appropriate means of discovering an answer to this question.The particular method chosen was the grounded theory approach developed by Glaser and Strauss. Data were collected in five surgical wards of a large city hospital over a period of five months. The research participants were twenty-one patients and the nurses involved in their care. Primary sources of data were interviews and the nursing records. These were augmented by field notes and accounts of observed incidents relating to the care of each patient.Using the inductive strategies of the grounded theory method, numerous descriptive concepts were generated during the data analysis. These were ordered within an integrating social process derived from anthropology. By this means a founded theory in the form of a theoretical framework – the Nursed Passage – was developed. Within this passage the patient is the passage and nursing is translated into action through the agency of the nurse.The Nursed Passage is a patterned partnership with three key elements. Firstly, the temporal element, characterised by ongoing movement and constant change, is conveyed in the sequence of phases or stages. Secondly the participative element is portrayed as a patterned relationship in which both nurses and patient are actively involved in progressing the patient through the passage. Finally, the contextual element recognises complex factors within the nursing environment which have an impact on the shape of the relationship between patient and nurse.This theoretical framework, generated from the reality of nursing as it occurs in one setting, assigns a specific shape to the encounter between nurses and patient. It identifies the contribution nursing alone can make to optimise each patient's hospital experience. In this way it both complements and facilitates the work of medical and other colleagues with whom nurses work. Thus it serves to revalue nursing in terms that can maximally utilise the registered nurse's knowledge and skill for the benefit of all concerned. Consequently, it has the potential value for nursing practice, education and research

Abstract: This thesis provides an interpretive critique of the way in which knowledge is viewed, transmitted and crystallized in the practice worlds experienced by four registered nurses working in acute care hospital settings. The theoretical assumptions of critical social theory underpin both the methodological approach (case study) and the analysis of data. In-depth unstructured interview, a critically reflexive dialogue between the investigator and participant focussed on the practice world experiences of the nurse, was the principle research method. A brief analysis of documentation was also undertaken.It is argued that previous studies related to nursing practice, and to the social worlds of nursing, have been limited by their failure to take account of the socio-political context in which nursing takes place. There has been a tendency to treat the transmission of knowledge in nursing and nursing practice process of information exchange. No account of socially generated constraints on personal and professional agency, or of systematic distortions in communication within the practice setting are therefore given.The analysis of data in this study demonstrates the way in which constraints on personal and professional agency were experienced by each of the four participants. In particular, practice expressing the participant's professional nursing knowledge and values ws often denied in the face of shared understandings reflective of the institutional ideology. These shared understandings included a belief in the legitimacy of medical domination over other social factors and the support of doctor, rather than nurse or patient, centered practices.This study demonstrates that the way that nurses and other social actors come to “know” and interpret their social worlds is dependent on the socio-political contest in which that knowledge in produced. It also shows how this knowledge may be treated ad though it were 'an object'. This tendency to treat existing social relationships and practices as 'natural' hence unchallengeable masks possibilities for transformative action within the practice of nursing.It is argued that a particular form of knowledge is required if nurses are to overcome the types of constraint experienced by these four nurses. This knowledge, emancipatory knowledge, is that developed in the process of shared, socially critical self-reflection rather than solitary, self-critical reflection

Abstract: This study explores the professional self-image of registered nurses, and investigates whether there were significant differences between Registered General and Obstetric nurses, and Comprehensive nurses; full-time staff; and between the work areas of Surgical, Medical and Obstetrics.A questionnaire designed by the researcher was used too collect data. From a stratified random sample of 230, a total of 209 Staff Nurses at Waikato Hospital completed the questionnaire (91% response). The sample was stratified by qualification, by type of employment, and by area of work.Results showed that overall in this study held a self-image not in keeping with the modern changing role of nursing. Significant differences were frequently found between full-time and part-time staff, and even fewer between the areas of work.Based on he results of this study, it was concluded that urgent action in needed to improve the self-esteem and self-image held by nurses, and even further research needs to be conducted into the following areas: attitudes, values and images held by nurses; attitudes and images held by the public, by patients and by student nurses

Abstract: This thesis presents the job of psychiatric nursing from the nurse's point of view, as derived from the author's personal experience and from interviews with thirty five other staff within a particular psychiatric institution.The first part of the thesis is reconstructed narrative account of an afternoon and a day shift in an acute admission ward. In the second part, the basic situation on the ward and some of the exigencies of nurse-patient and nurse-staff relations are discussed from structuralist and strategic conduct perspectives.The discussion that follows Anthony Giddens' (1976, 1979, 1984) conceptual framework of power, legitimation and signification, with particular attention to the strategic implications of ward routines, nursing practices, and interpersonal relations, as well as the duality of clinical and moralistic interpretive themes. The third part of the thesis 'the nurse's progress' over time. Characteristic changes in understanding and awareness take place with the movement from the 'backwards' to the 'acute' area and from the student to staff nurse. This is portrayed as a 'moral career' analogous to that suggested by Goffman (1968) for psychiatric patients; marked by 'happenings' that generate revised conceptions of self and others, and including those experiences of duality and contradiction discussed in part Two. While acknowledging the diversity of nurses' attitudes and approaches, with variations according to individual temperament, past experiences and the current setting, the suggestion is made of a common and distinctive 'meta-awareness' that develops with the fob