Abstract: The author presents a project to increase enrolments of women aged 60-69 years in the cervical screening programme. The programme included provision of packages comprising fliers, counter signs, stickers, postcards and pens to 1387 women's groups or locations where women gather. The author collates and analyses calls to the advertised 0800 telephone number, smear tests at the Well Women's Nursing Trust, and enrolment rates on the Cervical Screening Register from June to August 2001.

Abstract: This thesis traces the journey of the author's inquiry into family members' experience of the relinquishment of the personhood of a loved one with a dementia; a journey in which she reports that her own prior understandings were significantly challenged. The study was prompted by her experience of working in the area of dementia care and hearing, in the course of the working day, comments such as 'there's nobody there' made in relation to someone suffering from severe dementia. Such comments appear to imply that the person of the dementia sufferer in some way is no longer present. They are comments which relate to the very nature of personhood. The study takes impetus from the fact that the ways in which nurses view the personhood of dementia sufferers has significant consequences for the ways in which they respond to dementia sufferers and their families. This thesis, which retells the stories of four family members who each have a loved one with a dementia illness, reveals that rather than there being a unified concept of personhood in dementia, and in spite of the fact that particular understandings of dementia and personhood dominate our cultural conversations, in their day to day lives these four family members managed and made sense of their experience through particular and different ways of looking at the impact dementia has on the personhood of dementia sufferers. Not all did, in fact, relinquish the personhood of their family member. In their lived lives, the four research participants had recourse, each in different ways, to multiple discourses of personhood. For some, in addition to loss, there was also unexpected gain. This finding necessitated and shaped further inquiry into discourse and the role of discourse in shaping, constraining and opening up possibilities for meaning, and into the two substantive areas of dementia and personhood. Nurses work closely alongside the family of dementia sufferers who are daily faced with the challenge of managing and making meaning of that situation. It is critically important that they are able to recognise, validate and support the variety of needs that family members have. Nurses, whose education is traditionally based on a biomedical framework, are nevertheless often required to mediate between different understandings. Not only do they need currency of knowledge in the rapidly changing biomedical field of dementia, but they need also an understanding of the role and the power of discursive constructions of both dementia and personhood. Such understanding will provide insight into alternate ways of understanding these concepts. However, although such understanding is critical for nurses working in this area, the author suggests that nursing literature has not brought these discussions to the fore.

Abstract: This article reports a research project that investigated the experience and expectations of Maori who were newly-diagnosed with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Four people diagnosed with NIDDM were interviewed over 12 months. Participant recommendations are incorporated into suggested improvements for managing the condition.

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to describe the characteristics of community mental health nursing care in the community. Twenty six nurses were enrolled in a study consisting of semi-structured interviews about the nature of their care. Responses were analysed to identify categories of skills. These were characterised as: establishing connectedness; promoting individual and family resilience, promoting citizenship; and addressing structural issues. Responses from the nurses are used to illustrate these categories.

Abstract: This literature review discusses the history of the inclusion of culture into nursing studies. There is a small sample of overseas literature for critique with a focus on the inclusion of cultural safety in New Zealand. The concept of cultural safety was first introduced into New Zealand in the late 1980s. It was adopted by the New Zealand Nursing Council for nurses and midwives in 1992 and became part of the basic curriculum for nursing and midwifery education.