Abstract: Drawing on data from a large convenience sample of caregivers in New Zealand, this article argues for a reappraisal of the way in which care homes view death and dying and advocates the more widespread adoption of a palliative care philosophy. Increasing numbers of people are dying in care homes yet little is known about the nature and quality of their deaths. The limited research available suggests that there is a need to promote a philosophy of palliative care that is not confined to the terminal phase of life. However, adopting such an approach appears to be inhibited by a lack of understanding, education and training, as well as continuing reluctance to discuss issues of death and dying in an open and honest way.

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 study uses a critical approach to analyse influences connected to opportunities for nurses to have their unique contribution to the health system recognised, and identifies a plan of action. The stories as told by four Northland nurses, identified the underlying principle of self-knowledge which, when connected to core values emerged as personal power with the language of possibility. Other factors which enabled opportunity recognition were labelled as: knowing the self, integrating core values from personal and professional qualities, connecting these to an intuitive plan, trusting it because it is value-based, using that plan to form goals and achieve direction. Integrating core values into goal setting enabled people to make choices that would enhance as well as protect their personal development. This study has implications for nurses as they seek out places where they can work well and for health planners to design systems where this can happen.

Abstract: This study examines the discursive formation of professional nursing in one country, as revealed by the history of nursing in New Zealand. Michel Foucault's approach to historical research signifies a different level of analysis from conventional approaches, focusing not on the history of ideas but on an understanding of the present, a history of the present. A genealogical method derived from Foucauldian poststructuralism reveals how different understandings of nursing have occurred and have governed nursing practices and scholarship in different historical contexts. The archaeological investigation in this study reveals two moments of epistemic transformation, that is, two intervals of mutation and discontinuity. The Nightingale era in the 1880s precipitated the first epistemic shift – premodernism to modernism. The transfer of nursing education from hospital based training to the tertiary education sector, followed by the introduction of the baccalaureate degree, precipitated the second epistemic shift in the 1990s, the advent of postmodernism. Encompassing these two epistemes, six historical contexts are identified, where significant disruptions to the nursing discourses overturned previously held assumptions about what constituted a nurse. Each historical context is identified by specific discursive constructs. The first is colonial caring, the second the Nightingale ethos and the third heroic, disciplined obedience. In the fourth context, nursing is framed by, and within, discourses of skilled, humanistic caring, in the fifth, scientific, task focused managerialism, and in the 1990s, the sixth context, by multiple realities in an age of uncertainty.