Abstract: Responses to questions from dying people and their families are as individual as each nurse, patient, family member or situation. This is well recognised and an unspoken truth in palliative care practice
This paper explores the subjective nature of knowledge in palliative care generated through capturing moments of practice and subsequent reflections. This demonstrates how the author uses her model of care to open a space that enables the person and their family to find meaning from their experience and articulate what they need at the time.
The author identifies her interest in the paradoxical reality of knowing and not knowing and describes how that paradox contributes to her role in supporting individual?s needs within their realities

Abstract: There has been a great deal written about the efforts of the nursing profession to achieve full professional status but little about individual nurses' aspirations in seeking this goal. A group of 6 co-researchers, myself included, looked at this perceived gap in nurses' dreams for the profession.The philosophical underpinnings of the research were feminist and reflected postmodern feminist and some radical feminist concepts. This philosophical positions guided our research to uncover the knowledge of how we actively construct ourselves into dominant social values. This means we were searching for how our dreams were constructed and how we reflected the values of society in the way we produced our dreams. Peace and Power (Chinn & Wheeler, 1989) was used to guide the group interaction and Memory-Work (Hague, 1987) for data collecting and analysis. The co-researchers wrote individual stories about their dreams for the nursing profession. Collective analysis of the stories occurred in order to uncover the was in which the dreams were constructed. From this collective analysis the individual co-researchers redrafted their stories. Each redraft contained new insights, motives and actions of ourselves and others, forgotten experiences and inconsistencies, as a means of identifying and questioning dominant ideologies. The aim was to move towards empowerment through making the unconscious conscious.Four common dreams emerged from analysis of the stories: the first was that individual nurses want full professional status and autonomy; the second asked the nurses to care and support each other; a high standard of patient and nursing-focussed care was the third dream; and the fourth was for continuing education and knowledge to be shared between nurses. Although the dreams were common across the group it was found that the dreams varied in their construction. The dreams for each group member reflected multiple realities that emerged from different contexts, influenced by historical and socially dominant cultural values.Through studying and theorising our dreams for the nursing profession, we increased our understanding of how they were shaped so that we were able to initiate change and make our dreams become a reality. This has implications for the nursing profession. We live our lives collectively, as nurses and women, as others influence our being and reality. Although others influence us, it is each individual nurse who contributes to actively construct her/himself in to the dominant cultural values held by society and therefore up to each individual to initiate change. If nurses are able to make dreams a reality then positive changes will occur within the profession; I.e. decreased staff turnover, increased morale and increased quality in patient care

Abstract: An exploratory study of the functioning of four multi disciplinary health care teams ( HCT) in the New Zealand services and possible implications foe Health personnel education. This research seeks to 1. establish form structure and functioning of the HCT in the relation to the delivery of comprehensive primary health care. 2. Determine what collaborative skills are being used, the extent of interdependence and these factors which inhibit the use of these skills in providing primary health care. 3. Identify the key requirements for, and these factors which limit the successful functioning of the HCT in the provision of comprehensive primary health care. Data has been collected through structured interviews and observations. The analysis will compare and contrast the functioning of the social groups in the different settings in terms of their responses to both HCT index and appropriate contextual variables such that differences and similarities are delineated

Abstract: A study to examine the effects of pre- information ( what a Nurse learns about a patient before they meet) on clinical inference and Nursing actions, in a simulated Nurse- Patient situation. It was hypothesized that the nature of the pre-information will influence the way the patient is perceived and the resulting Nursing actions. The research was conducted in an obstetrical setting. There were 55 subjects within three groups. Two groups comprised student midwives and the third group was of second year comprehensive Nursing students near completion of clinical experience in maternal and child health nursing. A 5 minute videotape sequence of a role played post natal patient was made for use in the research. All subjects were given the same initial pre-information, viewed the videotape and gave written description of what they saw on the videotape and their response ( as the Nurse in the situation). This data provided a base line for each subject. Subject were then given additional pre-information concerning the patient's physical condition, her baby's condition or formed part of the control group ( receiving no additional information) The procedure was repeated. These responses were then compared with the base line for each subject. Responses were coded by means of content analysis. Group data was analysed using multivariate one way analysis of variance graphical display. The results indicated support of the hypothesis that the nature of the pre-information does influence the way in which a Nurse perceives a patient and resulting Nursing actions. Implications of these findings for Nurses are discussed

Abstract: There's Nobody There, is a qualitative study of the practise of caring for confused elderly people. It examines the implications of community care for social policy. It presents an account of the everyday lives of twenty eight family members who care for people with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia. It shows that community care like other forms of care, carries a cost that the burden is largely borne by the carers themselves, rather than by the State

Abstract: Up until the 1980s most of the historical writing about nursing and nurses in this country has been told from the points of view of past nursing leaders. The realities of day-to-day nursing in New Zealand general hospitals were relatively unknown.This thesis examines the experience of general hospital nursing between 1945 and 1960. The recollections of thirty-four nurses who nursed during this period have provided the key sources from which the major themes of this study have emerged. These themes, of dirty work, authoritarian control and discipline, and learning nursing are discussed within the context of an expanding hospital system and a shortage of nurses.The study demonstrates the vast differences between the recollections of nurses of the experience of nursing and the rather high-flown rhetoric of the nursing leadership.Changes to the amount of cleaning, the ;level of discipline and control, and ways in which learning nursing was organised were small and gradual and occurred in the late 1950s.Overall, though, nursing in general hospitals by 1960 ws almost unchanged from the 1930s.An ethos of selfless service, opposition to unionism, and Christian altruism was till dominant amongst the nursing leadership. Nurses in training still worked a six day week, were expected to stay on duty until the work was done, and were supervised closely in, on and off duty time