Abstract: Explores how nurses working in a tertiary-level paediatric health-care facility understand research and evidence-based practice. Offers a descriptive, self-reporting, anonymous questionnaire to 600 paediatric nurses, asking both quantitative and qualitative questions on attitudes, knowledge and barriers relating to research and evidence-based practice utilisation. Identifies the barriers to undertaking research/evidence-based practice in paediatric nursing practice.

Abstract: This paper focuses on the history of Plunket nursing and Truby King's ideology and other dominant ideologies, during the years 1905 – 1920. To provide a context, the paper explores the development of a new nursing speciality – Plunket nursing, that became part of the backbone of a fledgling health system and the New Zealand nursing profession. Correspondingly, Truby King presented the country with a vision for improving infant welfare underpinned by his eugenics view of the world and his experimentation with infant feeding. The author argues that nurses were drawn to the work of the newly created Plunket Society and that the Society had lasting influence on the development of nursing in New Zealand.

Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyse the discourses drawn upon by community paediatric nurses in relation to children's rights to health. The philosophy of Michel Foucault has been used to underpin the analysis of the interviews and exemplars of five experienced community nurses, revealing conflicting power relationships and discourses. Rights are formalised morality and so from a children's rights perspective, discourses reflect both the moral and ethical positions of the nurses. Children are constructed as developing human beings whose moral status gradually changes and who, through a lack of developmental autonomy, entrust their decision-making to their representatives (parents and caregivers) as their trustees. Rights are correlative with the obligations and duties toward children by both families and society. Society constructs legislative and politically organised structures to govern raising children because children are an intrinsic social concern. Whilst representing society's interest in children's rights to health, nurses in the home act as a conduit for multiple governing structures. The nurses in this study construct their “truths” and knowledge about children's health rights from nursing, medicine, law, education, and social policy. However, the values of individual parents can conflict with universal values for children's health and wellbeing. Therefore representing society positions nurses as “agents of the state”, a role that potentially holds power over parents and children and leads to the epithet of “the health police”. Within the institution of the family, and in the privacy of the home, there are also mechanisms of power that can resist the mechanisms of the state and its representatives. Therefore the discourse “it takes a village to raise a child” competes with the “my home is my castle” discourse. Nurses negotiate a fine balance between these power relations. Nurses are challenged with using power productively to promote children's rights whilst respecting the role of parents and families. The author argues that children's rights are central to the moral and ethical work of nurses but that such work is often obscured and invisible. She proposes that children's community nurses are excellent at negotiating networking and connecting at a micro level, but need to create a more sophisticated and cohesive entity at a macro level to become fully political children's rights advocates.

Abstract: Mothers, whose children had undergone a liver transplant more than one year ago at time of interview and whose children were outpatients of Starship Children's Hospital, were invited to participate in this research. A Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach, informed by the work of van Manen (1990) was used. Three mothers of children who had received a liver transplant were interviewed to reveal the meanings of the phenomenon – what is the meaning of lived experience of mothers in caring for their child who has undergone and recovered following liver transplantation? Little previous study regarding mothers' lived experience of caring for their child, who had recovered from a liver transplant, was found in the literature. The emerging themes were punctuated with stress being a consistent feature. Utilising Ruddick's (1983) concepts of maternal thinking, the emerging themes were merged within the three interests governing maternal practice; preservation, growth and acceptability. The absolute capacity for attentive love draws the experience together. An essential theme identified out of the analysis was the concept of survival relating to the unique features of liver transplantation and the consequences of liver rejection and failure. The findings contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon, emphasising the need for good support systems for families of children who have undergone transplantation; assistance in the establishment of maternal coping strategies and regular feedback on the children's progress acknowledging the role and care provided by mothers.

Abstract: This study explores the development of 'family-centred care' in New Zealand as part of an international movement advanced by 'experts' in the 1950s concerned with the psychological effects of mother-child separation. It positions the development of 'family-centred care' within the broader context of ideas and beliefs about mothering and children that emerged in New Zealand society between 1960 and 1980 as a response to these new concerns for children's emotional health. It examines New Zealand nursing, medical and related literature between 1960 and 1990 and considers both professional and public response to these concerns. The experiences of some mothers and nurses caring for children in one New Zealand hospital between 1960 and 1990 illustrate the significance of these responses in the context of one hospital children's ward and the subsequent implications for the practice of 'family-centred care'. This study demonstrates the difference between the professional rhetoric and the parental reality of 'family-centred care' in the context of one hospital children's ward between 1960 and 1990. The practice of 'family-centred care' placed mothers and nurses in contradictory positions within the ward environment. These contradictory positions were historically enduring, although they varied in their enactment.

Abstract: Parent-infant skin-to-skin care has become an advocated aspect of care in neonatal intensive care units nationally within New Zealand and internationally. However the implementation of this care by nurses can be limited by a number of factors within the practice environment. This dissertation presents a critical analysis of literature alongside reflection on the author's own practice experience to explore factors that may be constraining the use of skin-to-skin care with the very low birth weight infant in the neonatal intensive care unit. These factors are examined through a lens of risk taking behaviour underpinned by the grounded theory work of Dobos (1992). The concept of risk is explored in order to develop an understanding of why, in the author's view, the practice of skin-to-skin care of very low birth weight infants may have declined in recent years. For neonatal nurses skin-to-skin care of the very low birth weight infant presents challenges related to the environment, physiological stability of the infant and changes over the past 10 years in the clinical management of very low birth weight infants. As progress is made toward the design, development and eventual move to a new unit in Dunedin recommendations pertaining to the change in physical space, the introduction of a structured model for nursing care and implications for nursing practice development in relation to skin-to-skin care are described.

Abstract: Establishing a trusting relationship is a key therapeutic intervention for nurses working with families of hospitalised children. This article is an exploration of the definition of trust. Specifically, it considers how parents come to trust (or not) nurses in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) helps to reveal the meaning of parent-nurse trust and how this affects nursing practice. Understanding and meeting parental needs is important in developing and sustaining trust. The medical model of care often dominates in NICU. This is a deficit model that focuses on illness and treatment. However, the use of a nursing framework, such as developmentally supportive family centred care, focuses on recognising and building on the strengths of the family, by fostering trust to equip the family with the capacity to manage their infant's health care.

Abstract: The author describes the nursing of febrile children in a general paediatric ward at Tauranga Hospital. She focuses on the cooling methods used and their efficacy. Ward practice is compared with clinical trials and the literature to determine best practice and evidence-based guidelines. Also discussed are fans and clothes removal, tepid sponging, paracetamol, and brufen.