Abstract: The question explored in this research project is: What are inpatient registered nurses' perceptions of the factors which influence therapeutic relationship development? The literature reviewed for this project includes the history of interpersonal relationships in nursing; therapeutic relationships; what constitutes these relationships. Also discussed is literature about phenomenology as the underlying theoretical and philosophical position that informs the research method. To answer the research question a single focus group was used to gather data from a group of registered nurses practising in inpatient mental health units. Focus groups as a data collection method produce data and insights that would not be accessible without the group interaction. The key themes to emerge from the data analysis were; time, environment, knowing / self-awareness, compassion and power imbalance / empowerment. These key themes are discussed in relation to the literature and the wider context of the mental health care environment. The contribution this research makes to nursing includes a list of recommendations to nurses, nurse leaders and managers who aim to provide therapeutic mental health unit environments.

Abstract: A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree
of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY 2003.
This thesis highlights the ways in which the practices of contemporary midwives in
Aotearoa/New Zealand are caught within the intersection of an array of competing discourses. The context for this is the reconstruction of midwifery in Aotearoa/New Zealand as an autonomous feminist profession founded on partnership with women. Interviews and participant observation with midwives, based mainly in one New Zealand city, are the basis of an analysis of the complexity of midwives? praxis as professionals. The analysis draws on insights from critical and feminist approaches to Foucault?s theories of discourse, power and the subject. It includes discussion of the conditions which came to produce and authorise the concept of ?partnership?. Which subjects can speak about partnership, and when? What claims
are made about it? What challenges it?

Abstract: Reports the approach to child and family health nursing in Canada, the US, and the UK. Divides the report into health policy, primary health care services, nursing education and the development of primary health care nurse practitioners, and nursing leadership in primary health care. Part of the Margaret May Blackwell Scholarship Reports series.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to increase neuroscience nurses' awareness of how the head is perceived as sacred by some cultures. This article will outline a definition of culture, discussion around the sanctity of the head for some cultures, the cultural significance of common neuroscience interventions, the use of traditional healing methods, and prayer. Examples will be provided of how nursing interactions and interventions affect some cultures, looking primarily at a Maori and Pacific Island perspective. The focus of this paper is within a New Zealand paediatric setting.

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the evolving meaning of 'culture' in New Zealand nursing. Then, drawing upon the findings of research that used hermeneutic phenomenology to explore the experience of nursing people from cultures other than one's own, a description of the constituent parts is of this phenomenon is briefly outlined and followed by an exemplar that describes the coalescent and contradictory nature of the phenomenon as a whole. As New Zealand nurses negotiate the conflicts essential for ongoing development of their practice, interplay of the notions of prejudice, paradox and possibility is evident at intrapersonal and interpersonal levels as well as in relation to professional and other discourses.

Abstract: This literature review explores some of the issues related to women's experience of cardiac rehabilitation and demonstrates that women's experience may be different to that of men. Much of the research related to coronary heart disease (CHD) has been performed using either exclusively male populations or such small numbers of women that the results from the women studied were unable to be analysed independently. The author advocates that nurses working within this area of practice require an understanding of women's experience of recovery from a heart attack in order to better meet their needs.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the discourses of scientific mothercraft and their implications for the nurse-mother relationship, drawing on the author's recent research into surveillance and the exercise of power in the child health nursing context. The application of Foucauldian discourse analysis to the texts generated by interviews with five New Zealand child health nurses confirms that this paradoxical role has never been fully resolved. Plunket nurses primarily work in the community with the parents of new babies and preschool children. Their work, child health surveillance, is considered to involve routine and unproblematic practices generally carried out in the context of a relationship between the nurse and the mother. However, there are suggestions in the literature that historically the nurse's surveillance role has conflicting objectives, as she is at the same time an inspector and family friend.

Abstract: Sexual health clinics and the people who visit them commonly face stigma. Sexually transmitted infections have historically been used to divide people into “clean” and “dirty”. A grounded theory study of the work of sixteen nurses in six sexual health services in New Zealand was undertaken to explore the management of sexual health care. The study uncovered the psychological impact of negative social attitudes towards the people who visit sexual health services and to the staff who work there. Sexual health nurses manage the results of stigma daily and reveal in their interactions with clients a process of destigmatisation.